Fool Me Once
by Pellaaearien
Summary: Rose Tyler has crossed entire universes, striding parallel to parallel, to find the Doctor again. So why is it that, now she's finally found him, he's acting like he can't see her?
1. For the Reunion

"Oof!"

Rose stumbled to her knees as she came out the other side of the Void. The trip had been a bit rougher than usual and she took a second to catch her breath. She'd been doing this for long enough that the accompanying nausea was fleeting, almost perfunctory.

Her physical discomfort was soon forgotten, however, when she felt the TARDIS key warm against her chest. Her stomach clenched with excitement and she took a deep breath to let out in a gust of relief. She'd finally done it. She wasn't just in the same universe as the TARDIS - she was close!

Rose pulled the key from under her shirt with trembling fingers. The gold shimmer surrounding it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. Using the key like a compass needle, she followed it to the TARDIS in record time, scarcely noticing as she tripped over tree roots in her path. She'd landed in some sort of winter forest - the air beneath the trees was still and cold, the crunching of her eager footsteps seeming to reverberate off the bare, solemn trunks in every direction.

The TARDIS herself was nestled in a small hollow under the cover of two ancient pines, and Rose half-slid down the gentle slope, holding the key out like a certain alien always held his screwdriver as she rushed towards the beloved blue box, her eyes clouded with tears. A mixture of excitement and cold caused her to fumble with the lock in her haste, but finally she was inside the console room she'd been dreaming of for three years, lulled by the siren song of home.

The room was silent, with only the hum of the time rotor to indicate life. Rose's spirits fell just a touch at the realisation that her reunion with the Doctor was going to be further delayed, but she pushed the thought aside. She'd waited three years after all, and now she was here in the TARDIS. The Doctor couldn't be far away.

"Doctor?" she called loudly, though she knew the chances of him actually being inside the TARDIS when it wasn't in the Vortex were slim. She called his name again, a few more times, savouring being able to say it in a place where there was a chance he could hear it. When no wild-haired madmen appeared around the corner, she concluded that the Doctor was indeed on a jaunt of this ice forest planet, and resigned herself to waiting a bit longer.

Her heart was pounding, sending blood rushing hectic in her veins. She tried taking deeper breaths to calm herself. It had just been so long… She felt the presence of the TARDIS, a warm and steady glow, and sighed happily, caressing one of the coral struts. "Oh, I missed you too, Dear," she said, and the lights brightened briefly in acknowledgement.

As Rose's emotions settled, she realised that she was voraciously hungry. On any other day, that would be her cue to jump back so she could grab a protein shake from the stocked fridge in the launch room on her way to the Torchwood med bay after yet another unsuccessful jump. This time…

She deactivated the recall function on the cannon with a grin that felt like it might never leave her face before making her way to the TARDIS galley. No more bland protein shakes for her; she felt like celebrating. The habitual check up was looming in her future once the Doctor learned what she'd been up to, she knew that well enough, but she admitted she might not mind so much if it was performed by the Doctor, rather than a doctor. At least this once.

Rose halted just inside the door to the galley with a contented sigh. Home.

With movements that had once been as natural to her as breathing, she'd put the kettle on for tea almost before she realised she'd done it. When she opened the cupboard, her favourite mug was prominently displayed. She took it down reverently, cradling it in her hands, tears starting in her eyes again. A small part of her mind knew how daft she must look, getting emotional over a mug, but the larger part knew that it was a representation of everything she'd lost when she was trapped in the parallel universe.

Shaking her head, she set it carefully on the counter, and discovered with satisfaction that the tea was still kept in the same place. Rose wondered if the Doctor had kept her mug there next to his or if it was the TARDIS' doing.

She looked around as the tea steeped, thinking it slightly surreal how little had changed since she'd been gone. She wondered how long it had been for him, if someone else was travelling with him now. The pristine galley held no clues as to the presence of another person on board. Rose pushed the thought aside with a mental shrug and started to make herself a sandwich. She'd find out soon enough. She hoped he had found someone, though. He was rubbish on his own.

Famished as she was, she polished off the sandwich in record time, which kept her from fretting when she'd finished and the Doctor still hadn't returned. To give herself something to do with her hands, she washed her plate immediately and put it away. She was just settling in with a second cup of tea - she couldn't remember the last time she'd let herself sit with a cup of tea - when she heard the tell-tale wheeze and felt the accompanying rumble that told her they were in flight. The Doctor was back!

Rose leapt out of her chair, intending to run straight back to the console room, but before she could move out into the corridor she heard the Doctor's voice, unexpectedly, tantalizingly close, coming towards her.

"You go on and change out of those wet things," he was saying to someone outside of Rose's field of vision as she listened, heart in her throat. His tone was rougher than she remembered it being, though Rose supposed her feeble human mind could have forgotten. "I'll make us a cuppa to warm up."

Well, that answered the question of whether or not he was travelling with anyone. Rose's stomach came alive with butterflies at the thought of him heading for the galley; that any second now, they would finally be reunited.

"Doctor!" she cried happily when he appeared in the doorway. She'd spent so many sleepless nights dreaming of this moment, when his eyes would go wide with surprise and joy before she raced to meet his open arms. Realising she was still frozen in place from when she'd first heard the TARDIS move, she extricated herself from behind the table to go to the Doctor.

It was only then that she realised he wasn't reacting the way she'd imagined he would; in fact, he was barely reacting to her presence at all.

The Doctor gave her a once over, so fleeting she nearly missed it, his expression the picture of disinterest as he ambled over to start the tea. Rose had been expecting at least a hug for their reunion, the way they used to be - it was so natural she'd hardly given it a thought. The urge to run him over was still nearly overpowering, but his unnatural behaviour gave her pause.

"Doctor?" she said again, uncertainty creeping into her voice as she reached out a tentative hand. He ignored her.

Crestfallen, and more than a little hurt, though confusion currently had the upper hand, Rose took her hand back, blinking bewildered tears from her eyes as she realised that something was very wrong with the Doctor. Even in her worst nightmares, the ones where she fought her way back to the Doctor only for him to tell her that what they had never really meant anything, that he didn't want her to come with him again, he'd at least acknowledged her!

Her first, panicked thought was that the jump had gone wrong somehow, that she'd come out as a ghost or something, but her body seemed solid as ever and she'd even eaten a sandwich. A sandwich that, thanks to her restlessness, no evidence remained of. Firming her resolve, she reached for the Doctor again, only for him to step deftly out of reach without even stopping what he was doing.

Rose stared, open mouthed, too stunned even for tears. This was so far from what she'd been expecting it might as well be another bizarro universe. Even with all the time she'd spent telling herself not to get her hopes up, she'd assumed the Doctor would at least be pleased to see her again. To have even that basic assumption called into question… it was worse than finding a London where the skies were filled with zeppelins. It was like waking up one morning only to discover that two plus two now equalled five. It was impossible.

Rose had seen it, in his eyes on that beach, how distraught he'd been, as he gazed at her hungrily, ardently, and now he was acting like he couldn't even see her. Rose couldn't process what was happening, rejection coursing through her, strong and instinctive, even as her mind continued screaming that something was Very Wrong.

"Doctor?" she tried once more, voice thick with unshed tears. "Can't you see me?"

The Doctor didn't answer right away, instead taking down two mugs, his and one she'd never seen, before turning to lean against the counter as the water boiled. It was a position she'd seen him in so many times before, yet it only served to highlight the wrongness of the situation. He was facing her now, and she drank in the sight, taking note of the different suit, the fringe now styled more crazily than ever, the lines around his nose and mouth that hadn't been there before.

"Course I can see you," he said at last, but like he was speaking to himself, and he wasn't looking at her.

She took a step closer without thinking about it, without realising her arm was still out until the Doctor said, "Now remember: no touch. You know it's against the rules." Rose dropped her hand, only to bunch both hands into fists at her sides.

"What rules?" She'd meant to shout the words but couldn't quite get enough air.

"Our rules," the Doctor replied at once, maddeningly calm, as he brought out the tea.

Rose wracked her brain, trying to think. Had she come too early in his timeline? Was this the Doctor from before they'd been separated, from before they'd become… what they were? But she couldn't remember ever visiting this planet with the Doctor. He'd clearly changed from the Doctor she'd known. And no matter what their relationship had or hadn't been, her Doctor would certainly have been surprised to see her already in the galley if he'd just seen her in the console room. Not to mention, they'd never had a rule against touching, not even after France, not even when they probably should have.

I'm still just an image, he'd said, the words from that day seared into her memory. No touch. A new, horrible thought crept into her mind. Had he… was it possible he'd been grateful for that? To finally rid himself of the clingy human who'd attached herself to him?

The very notion turned her world upside down and she sat heavily, trying to process. But wasn't that just it? She'd fought so hard against getting her hopes up, yet she was still selfish enough that the Doctor not wanting to touch her was incomprehensible.

"I see you've already got yours," he said, sounding for all the world like this was an everyday occurrence as he poured. "That's lovely, you can join us for tea." He still wouldn't look at her.

Rose, feeling hollow, couldn't think of anything else to do but play along, even though she wanted nothing more than to flee the room. Another thought which would have been inconceivable to her not half an hour before.

"Wh-Who're you travelling with now?" she forced out, her voice sounding faint and strangled.

"Don't be ridiculous, haven't I told you about Donna?" He rooted around in the cupboards for some biscuits. "She's still here, seems like she's in it for the long haul, but we've seen how well that usually turns out, haven't we?" His voice remained light, unconcerned, like he was commenting on the weather rather than the worst day of her life.

"Doctor," Rose sobbed, pushed well past the limits of what she was prepared to endure, "Doctor I'm here, I'm really here!" The Doctor put the biscuits down on the table in front of her and she lunged at him, overwhelmed by his scent and nearness, but he stepped back quickly, putting several feet of space between them that, at that moment, seemed more impassable than dimensional walls.

"Nuh-uh," he said, actually shaking his head at her like she was a misbehaving child. He was finally looking in her direction, but wouldn't meet her eyes no matter how hard she tried. "We've been over this. You're not going to get me like that again."

"Again?" Rose burst out, unable to control herself any longer. "How d'you mean, again? I don't understand!" Impossibly, he was smiling, but far from the smile she'd been expecting to see; it was small, and somehow false on his face. The kind of polite smile you wore when you couldn't care less about the person you were talking to. Rose's shallow breaths felt like broken glass in her chest.

"Come on, you're cleverer than that," he said, some of the amusement fading from his voice. "It's been ages since you tried this tack. It didn't work then and it won't work now. I'm onto you."

"Onto what? Doctor, you're not making any sense!" The tears in Rose's eyes now were frustrated, angry tears. She fought to keep them from falling, suddenly unwilling to be vulnerable in front of this strange, distant Doctor. Because what he was saying was in fact starting to make a sick amount of sense that she wasn't at all sure she knew how to fight against.

"Doctor, have you been hallucinating me?" The only thing she could think of to say to convince him otherwise was to reassure him that she wasn't a hallucination - which was of course exactly what a hallucination would say.

The Doctor shrugged. "You of all people should know the answer to that. I assumed, after what happened, that you'd have a whole host of new and exciting things to try but here you are again with the old song and dance. I must admit, I'm a bit disappointed." He was still smiling at her, like someone who'd figured out a trick first and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Rose gasped. Anger surged within her, and she welcomed the sensation, since it masked the growing sense of fear. She'd never wanted to slap the Doctor more than in that moment. Maybe it would shake him out of... whatever this was. But she didn't know how this stranger-Doctor would react to that, and as much as it hurt, she had a job to do. She'd give her bloody message first, the one she'd fought so hard to deliver, then slap the Doctor, and then find a way to flee what had become her own personal hell.

"The stars are going out," she announced at last, voice hard. "That's what I came here to tell ya. And I thought maybe you might want to help with that, but I guess I was wrong."

The Doctor paused. A pregnant silence stretched between them, punctuated only by Rose's breaths. She scarcely dared hope. Had she finally gotten through to him?

"Well, that is certainly a new one," he drawled at last. "Completely impossible, of course, stars just don't go out, but never let it be said that you don't deliver."

"Doctor!" Rose couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that this was the man she'd been trying to get back to, this man who could be so cavalier with (her heart) the fate of the multiverse hanging in the balance. It had been a long three years, as she'd be the first to admit. She'd changed, she knew she had. But the man standing in front of her wearing blue and a detached expression had changed so much as to be unrecognisable.

Or, a little voice whispered insidiously in her ear, has it been so long that you polished all those memories of yours to a rosy glow, distorting how much you meant to him? Was she truly that self-centred? She'd abandoned Mickey, leaving his heart, his life, in tatters. She'd left her family; her mother, her little brother, and thrown herself into this quest that she knew full well was incredibly dangerous. For the sake of the multiverse, yes, but on the back of technology that had been developed for purely personal reasons.

Rose was suddenly confronted with a side of herself she usually tried to ignore, and didn't like what she saw. Why else would the Doctor be refusing to let her touch him? And without touch, how on earth was she going to get through to him? Especially since it didn't seem as though he even wanted her to prove herself.

Ears ringing under the pressure of her rising desperation, she took another step closer to the Doctor, knowing now it was a threatening gesture, and intending it as such; a last-ditch effort to reclaim the life she'd thought she'd lost. "Doctor," she said again, her voice dangerously calm, "I'm here. I'm here, and I'm real, and I'm going to prove it to you."

The Doctor took a slow step back, composure still unshaken, and shook his head at her again. "You're not real. You never have been."

That stopped Rose in her tracks. "What."

She honestly had no idea what she would have done after that, had a vibrant ginger woman not entered the galley a moment later.

"All right, Spaceman, where's that cuppa you promised me? Dunno why you always insist on bringing me to these frozen places, say what you will about that resort but at least it was -" She paused, taking in the tableau before her. "Doctor, who's this?"

The sound of the Doctor's mug crashing to the floor broke the sudden silence. He ignored it completely, whirling to face the woman. "You mean-? Donna, you can see her?" The words crowded each other in their hurry to reach the air. Rose remained frozen, staring wide-eyed at the two of them.

"Well of course I can see her! She's even got a cup of tea which is more than I've got - thanks by the way - but what I want to know is, where did she come from? I haven't been gone that long, and you told me that planet was uninhabited! Have you been hiding her somewhere?"

She spoke very quickly, not giving the Doctor a chance to get a word in edgewise, as he opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Rose would have laughed if the situation hadn't been so dire.

"Donna, I need you to do something for me," the Doctor said, very quietly, emotion finally breaking in his voice. "I need for you to go over there, and touch her."

"Is there some reason you can't do it yourself, alien boy?" Donna retorted, but the earlier fire was gone from her tone in the face of the Doctor's desperation. It was telling that it never occurred to either of them to make a joke about his wording. He was already shaking his head before she finished.

"You've never been able to see her, before," he explained, to the utter bewilderment of both women. He raked his hands through his hair as he spoke and Rose wished she were in a position to better appreciate it. "So maybe something's changed, maybe… I don't know, Donna, could you just do it for me, please?"

Rose was startled by the genuine note of pleading in the Doctor's tone. Apparently the woman - Donna - was too, because she nodded wordlessly, stepping past the Doctor, who watched with such a banked intensity in his eyes that it transfixed Rose to the spot.

"This all right?" Donna asked softly, indicating her intention to touch Rose's shoulder. Rose nodded, wordless. Donna placed her hands on Rose's shoulders and the Doctor inhaled sharply.

"Rose?" It was a puff of air, a battle cry, and it hung trembling in the air between them before Donna spun around.

"Rose? You don't mean... this is Rose? That Rose?"

The Doctor was gripping the counter so hard he was like to shatter it, and looked to be on the verge of tears. "You could touch her. Rose… you're real. You're here."

All of Rose's earlier anger had evaporated once Donna entered the room. Hearing the Doctor say her name made her realise he hadn't used it once, the whole time they'd been talking. A retort was on her lips - that's what I've been trying to tell you! - but she couldn't find the will say it to this Doctor who looked as liable to shatter as the countertop he clung to.

"Yes, Doctor," she said, her voice somehow gentle and assured despite her racing heart, "I'm here. I'm real. I came to find you. What's all this about?" The comments the Doctor had made presented Rose with a terrifying image, and she just needed her Doctor in her arms to reassure them that the other was all right.

"I kept seeing you everywhere," the Doctor was saying, looking to be on the verge of panic as he nearly cringed away from Rose's slow advance, and Rose felt her heart fracture. "You were everywhere, and eventually I just stopped looking. I couldn't do it any more, Rose, I just… I couldn't."

"Doctor," Rose said in the same quiet tone. "Doctor, look at me." His eyes snapped up to hers as if all he'd been waiting for was her permission. The raw emotion she saw in their depths had her reaching out before she could think better of it. When her hand touched his cheek, the Doctor choked back a sob, leaning into her caress the way it should have been, that day on a desolate Norwegian beach. Rose waited until he looked at her again, finding a smile to give him. "Hello."

The Doctor let out a low sound, and suddenly she was in his arms, being held so tightly she could hardly breathe. Rose clutched him tighter. Home. This was home. She felt tears on her face, and couldn't tell whether they were the Doctor's or hers. The Doctor kept a whispered litany of Rose's name under his breath. Both of them were shaking, entwined so tightly Rose didn't know whose legs gave out first, but somehow they ended up on the floor pressed against the cabinets.

It didn't seem as though the Doctor had any intention of letting her go. A new word had entered his ceaseless repetitions, and it was 'sorry.'

"Shh, Doctor, it's all right," Rose murmured, stroking his hair. He shuddered, pressing closer, taking deep, shaking breaths.

"No, Rose, it's not all right," he said at length, speaking into the junction between her neck and shoulder. "You made it back, after so long, only to have me treat you like that… You deserve an apology at the very least, entity or no entity."

Rose pulled back the slightest amount possible to see his face. "What entity? Doctor, what's happened to you?"

The Doctor wouldn't let her move away, pressing his ear to her chest, over her heart.

"Planet before last," he replied, sounding like the words were being pulled from him. "I took Donna to Midnight. I encountered an entity on a tour bus… It got inside my head, taking over my mind…" Rose gasped, clutching him to her.

"Oh my God! Doctor, what did it do to you?" Then, in an attempt to lighten the mood, she continued, "And you say I'm the jeopardy friendly one?"

The Doctor huffed, and Rose felt a shot of warmth. At least it was something.

"It didn't… start then, if that's what you're asking," he said, and some part of Rose was amazed at how open he was being, tried not to see it as further evidence of him not being himself. "But it made the visions go away for a bit, and when I saw you again…" He squeezed her so tightly she could feel her lungs protest, yet it still might never be enough. "I thought it might have made them worse. Rose, I'm so sorry. I spent so long trying not to get my hopes up I forgot what hope was."

"Doctor…" Rose found no words to say. She rested her head on top of his, noting vaguely that Donna seemed to have made herself scarce and silently thanking her. "I'm here," she said at last - the words served to reassure her, too, and she would say them as many times as necessary. "I'm here, and you're here, and together we're the stuff of legend, yeah?" The Doctor made a sound, muffled against her arm, that was either a sob or a noise of agreement. Perhaps both.

"We'll figure it all out," Rose continued, again more for her benefit than his - somewhere the stars were still going out, after all - but she thought the Doctor could do with hearing it too. She waited for his tentative nod before rubbing bracing circles on his back, preparing to pull away.

"First, though, let's get you taken care of, Doctor. Because it sounds like that resort wasn't that long ago, and I know the way you like to throw yourself back into things. Will you… will you let me do that for you?" She held her breath, afraid he would demur. Rose hadn't realised until she said it how much she needed this for herself as well, a step towards the way they used to be, taking care of each other after an adventure. She fought fiercely against the insidious thought that he wouldn't want that from her any more, telling herself that it hadn't been the Doctor talking, before.

"Oh, Rose." The Doctor took a deep breath. He pulled back to look at her, and Rose tried not to associate being able to breathe with feeling bereft. "I missed you," he said solemnly, eyes never leaving hers. She forgot how to breathe again; had somehow, impossibly, forgotten the power latent in those eyes, the way his gaze had always managed to unstitch her. She made a helpless sound low in her throat.

"I missed you too, Doctor. So, so much." The Doctor sighed, giving her a final squeeze before releasing her. They helped each other up, efforts made awkward by their mutual reluctance to keep anything less than maximum contact between them. When they finally managed, they smiled sheepishly at each other, but neither seemed ready to make the first move. Rose stroked her thumb over the Doctor's pulse point, revelling in the feel of the feather-light dual cadence.

"So? Tell me what you need, Doctor," Rose said at last, when he made no further sign; though she could certainly relate to wanting to drink in the sight of him as much as possible.

"Well," he drawled, running his free hand through his hair, and her breath hitched to see those quirks of his she loved so much for real, rather than in memory. "I suppose I could do with another stint in the Zero Room. I might not have stayed there for as long as I should have, last time."

Rose rolled her eyes lightly at him, but declined to comment. "How 'bout some tea? Would that help? You smashed your mug."

He shrugged, carefully stepping around the pieces as he led her from the galley. "I'll fix it. Later. And I'll have the TARDIS send some tea up."

"What's the Zero Room?" Rose asked as they went hand in hand down the corridor, and it was almost like nothing had changed, only everything had. The Doctor looked a mess, and Rose knew she wasn't much better, residual aches from the jump that she strove to hide from the Doctor making themselves known after the initial rush of emotion had died down, their hands gripped between them much more tightly than before.

"It's sort of like a sensory deprivation chamber for Time Lords," the Doctor explained, not really looking where he was going because he was watching her. "Inside, you're cut off from the random electrical and radiological impulses from the rest of the universe. That makes it ideal for neurological healing since I don't have to keep up even my basic telepathic barriers to screen all that out."

Rose considered what he'd said. She'd known the Doctor was a touch telepath but she'd never thought much about what it actually meant to be a telepathic being; the Doctor rarely mentioned it. "Do you use it often? Only this is the first I've heard of it."

"Not with any great frequency, no," the Doctor said slowly, like he had to think about it. "I used it most often in my first incarnation, while I was getting used to being away from Gallifrey's telepathic centre. The regeneration from my fourth to my fifth incarnation was a bit rough so I used it then, too."

"Rougher than your last regeneration?" Rose asked, before she could stop herself. She still remembered the hours of fear when she hadn't been sure the Doctor would ever wake up. The Doctor stroked his thumb over hers.

"None of my regenerations have really been easy," he admitted, as they turned a corner. "Regeneration is supposed to happen within a low-grade telepathic field, with another Time Lord present, and sufficient time afterwards to rest." He shrugged, favouring her with a small smile. "I've never had that luxury."

Suddenly Rose wanted to hear about all his past regenerations, his past adventures. During her time in Pete's World she'd realised just how little she actually knew about the Doctor's life. Before she'd been trapped, she'd always felt as though there was time to get to know those things. Now she was back, and intending to stay that way, but she would never again take their time for granted.

"Ah, and it seems like the old girl's moved it closer for us!" the Doctor exclaimed, as he caught sight of a nondescript door, patting one of the roundels in thanks.

"And I can go in there with you?" Rose asked hesitantly, squeezing the Doctor's hand in query. "It's safe for humans?"

"Completely safe, and I'm not about to let you out of my sight, Rose Tyler," he said, his voice lowering as he spoke until it was almost a growl.

She smiled at him. "Good."

The Doctor pushed open the door, relaxing almost immediately as he stepped across the threshold. "Ah, that's much better," he sighed. "Close the door for us, Rose?"

She did so, feeling as though she'd stepped into a soundproofed room but without the oppressive undercurrent. "It's so peaceful," she said, looking back at the Doctor.

"That it is!" he agreed, already sounding more like his old self as he took a deep breath. Rose imitated him, surprised by the delicate aroma she could sense despite the room's clinical demeanour.

"Smells like… roses?" she guessed, unsure of the word until she spoke it, and when she did her eyes widened. The Doctor nodded, pulling her closer to him.

"It always has, since the very first."

Not sure what to make of that revelation, Rose remained silent as she walked with the Doctor further into the room, where a tea service was set for two, divesting herself of her heavy leather jacket and boots as she went.

Aside from the room's scent, Rose could also hear something: a haunting, ethereal melody that hovered just above the range of being audible. It was beautiful, and she intended to ask the Doctor about it, but he was already pouring them tea, not seeming to pay it any attention. She thought it might be like the ambient soundtracks she often heard playing in the various spas the Doctor had taken her to, designed to promote relaxation.

The Doctor pulled her down to sit shoulder to shoulder and passed her cup over. He took a long sip of his own tea, Rose following his every movement. He closed his eyes, but not before pulling her as close as physically possible. Rose didn't mind this in the slightest and nestled deeper into his side.

"I'm so glad you're here, Rose," he said quietly, rubbing absent circles on her shoulder. Rose wanted to cry upon hearing those words from him so plainly after the upheaval of their reunion, but it seemed the atmosphere of the Zero Room negated all such emotions. She squeezed his knee instead and he squeezed her tighter in response. "I really am rubbish without you. I know there are all sorts of things we need to talk about, like how you managed it and every single thing you were up to in Pete's World, and I'm sure you've got questions of your own. We'll get to all of that, very soon. I promise."

He turned her head gently to face him, meeting her eyes so she could see his sincerity. "But right now, I just want to hold you for a bit. That all right?" His expression made it clear he doubted her response, in light of his recent actions.

If Rose was being honest, she did harbour a certain amount of residual reluctance. She'd just been so confused. But the relaxing effect of the Zero Room and her own need made it easy to ignore. She'd get her answers. He'd promised. For now, at least, she and the Doctor were on the same page. It had been a long, lonely three years. It would be nice to forget the concerns that she'd been carrying and just be, safe in the arms of the man who meant so much to her, regardless of what happened afterwards.

"Yeah." She nodded her assent into his side, wrapping her arms around him as best she could despite the awkward angle. She didn't miss the grateful way he immediately curved around her, nor the last bit of tension she felt leave his body.

After the stress and the pain of the dozens of failed jumps, the effort of keeping her desperate hope alive, Rose allowed her mind to drift, lulled by the Doctor's nearness and the dreamlike melody. She thought she might have fallen asleep, but it seemed the Zero Room blocked those impulses also. Rose didn't mind. She didn't want to miss a second of her time with the Doctor, and was content with her tranquil daydreams. This sojourn had been intended for the Doctor's benefit but Rose admitted to herself it was probably a good idea for her, too.

Eventually, the Doctor stirred, his cool breath ruffling her hair. She shivered, blinking up at him, feeling comfortably disorientated as she pulled her scattered thoughts together, the way she would after a long nap.

"Thank you, Rose," he murmured. His face broke so easily into a soft smile it was like watching the sun rise. She mirrored his expression past the tears the Zero Room kept her from having, feeling like she was finally in the presence of her Doctor.

"How long's it been?" she asked blearily, voice rough from disuse. A tiny frown intruded between his brows then and she wanted to smooth it away, except that she was so comfortable and didn't feel like moving.

"It's been ages, Rose, you must be knackered," he said, the corners of his mouth turning down. "You should've said something earlier, I'm sorry."

"Still rude and not ginger," Rose teased, feeling lightness suffuse her chest. "'S alright, Doctor, this was nice." She felt like she ought to be preparing to move, but also wanted to prolong the contentedly fuzzy feeling as long as possible.

"Again, it's not all right. You're exhausted. Come here, Rose." With absolutely no effort Rose could discern, she was scooped up into his arms. It was a good place to be. She felt the moment they left the Zero Room, because the song quieted, her body felt heavier, and almost immediately she began to fall asleep.

"You can sleep if you want," the Doctor told her, his gentle voice vibrating through his chest.

"'M not tired," Rose protested, stifling a massive yawn. The corner of the Doctor's mouth turned up in a smirk. "Jus' comfortable." His expression softened again. His eyes were like molten pools, boring into hers.

"Good," was all he said, nudging open a door with his foot.

Rose shifted her head the slightest amount necessary to look around, and was surprised to see the walls of an unfamiliar room. Apparently the Doctor was too, because he stopped short. Butterflies woke in Rose's stomach at the thought of the Doctor having taken her anywhere other than her own room.

"You takin' me to bed, Doctor?" she teased, her brain-mouth filter apparently compromised.

"Yes, yours," the Doctor growled, shifting from foot to foot as though weighing the merits of a quick retreat. "Supposed to be, anyhow, but apparently the TARDIS has other plans."

Rose felt a rush of sleepy gratitude towards the ship. "Smart girl, our TARDIS," she drawled, and felt the Doctor's breath hitch before she heard it.

"Rose, you can't mean…"

"Doctor…" she groaned, twisting to look up at him. "I'm just gonna sleep. You should too." She held her breath, not daring to be any more direct than that but fearing her intent might be misunderstood.

"You're saying you want me to… stay with you?"

"Mhm." Rose couldn't hold back her yawn this time. "I've been saying it this whole time, Doctor. It's all right. Listen when I tell you things." Once again a failure of the brain to mouth filter. There was a wealth of history hidden in those words, and the Doctor's arms flexed involuntarily.

His voice trembled, but he kept it light as he replied, "Oh, and you're one to talk. Need I remind you about Rule One?"

"Don' wander off," Rose recited lazily. "Unless you're bored. Or you feel like it. Or to save the designated driver from being too clever for 'is own good."

The Doctor huffed a laugh. "In that order, too, I don't doubt. For now, however, it's bedtime for the human."

"An' the Time Lord?" Rose pressed, already feeling sleep settling around her ahead of the cloudlike duvet.

"Yup, and the Time Lord," the Doctor answered, toeing off his trainers at the same time as he pulled his tie from around his neck. "Now hush."

Rose heard his jacket slither to the floor - her eyes had fallen shut of their own accord. She felt the dip as the Doctor climbed in beside her and instinctively snuggled closer. The Doctor hesitated only for a moment before pulling her against him. Rose drank in the steady thrum of the Doctor's heartsbeat under her ear, that had once been as much a part of her life as the sound of the time rotor, or the steady background hum of the TARDIS in the Vortex. She hummed her total contentment and the Doctor's grip tightened in response.

"Doctor?" she said, hovering on the edge of oblivion.

"Yes, Rose?" Rose felt, rather than heard, the Doctor's response, and she grinned.

"I'm home." The Doctor's breath stuttered and he pressed a feather-light kiss to the top of her head that Rose didn't think she was supposed to notice. As she dropped off, his voice soothed her into sleep.

"Welcome home."


	2. And Straight On 'Til Morning

Rose woke with a start, from nebulous nightmares in which the Doctor stood still as a stone, unresponsive despite her frantic attempts to reach him.

 _You were never real._ His disembodied voice came from frozen lips. _You were never real and I never wanted you._ The tears on her cheeks were a familiar sensation, and she inhaled deeply, trying to find the strength to start another day. The breath was saturated with the tea-and-spice-and-starlight scent that belonged to the Doctor and she stiffened, trying to place where she was. There had been fingers running through her hair as she stirred and they halted immediately in their ministrations.

"Rose?"

It was the Doctor's voice, and Rose gasped, twisting so quickly to look behind her and reassure herself he was real that it was surprising she didn't pull something, though several of her bruised muscles twinged painfully. Hoping the sudden movement would disguise her wince, she frantically sought his eyes, which were watching her warily. The tension left her body in a rush as the events of the previous day flooded back to her. She'd done it. She'd found the Doctor again. It was all real.

"Doctor," she sighed with relief, relaxing against the lines of his body and burying her fingers in his hair, hopeful that it would prompt him to resume his activities. It felt completely natural to do so, despite their relationship not having quite progressed to that point before their separation, but a part of Rose was still on tenterhooks waiting for the Doctor's reaction. When he brushed her hair behind her ear and began rubbing her back after a moment's hesitation, she melted.

"Rose," he murmured, echoing her relief and gratitude and emotions even more profound and she shivered in his arms.

"I'm still here, Doctor," she whispered. He copied her movement, shuddering and drawing her closer. They stayed that way for an indefinite amount of time, giving and receiving silent assurances. They might have stayed that way forever, except eventually Rose's body reminded her that she'd crossed universes the day before, and since then had eaten only a sandwich and drunk two cups of tea. She needed a shower, breakfast, and the loo, though maybe not in that order.

"Doctor," she yawned, stretching as best she could in his embrace and hearing a series of pops and cracks as her spine realigned itself, "I'm afraid my _feeble human physiology_ needs a moment or two."

The Doctor chuckled, making a show of releasing her, but Rose sensed his deeper reluctance; shared it, if she was being honest. They'd so recently gotten each other back that even the relative distance of the en suite was too great. She extricated herself from the tangle of their sheets, unaccountably shy under the intensity of his gaze. She tugged nervously at the hem of her shirt, unable to look away. "Just… let's keep talking, okay?" she asked him, and would have felt very silly were it not for the relief in his eyes.

He nodded once. "Yeah."

She grinned, and set off, feeling his eyes on her the entire way. Rose thought it was funny, how much this resembled a morning after, even if they'd done nothing more than some intense spooning. She tried to think of something to say before the door closed behind her and couldn't, but of course the Doctor was ready.

"So how long were you back before us?" he asked casually, as though this were an everyday occurrence. Normally Rose would never dream of trying to carry on a conversation through a bathroom door but these were not ordinary circumstances, and it was reassuring to hear his voice without a visual connection.

"Oh, I dunno, not very long," she replied, unprepared for the mundane nature of his query. "Twenty minutes, half an hour, maybe? I pretty much just went straight to the galley and made myself a cuppa and a sandwich." At the memory of her last meal, Rose's stomach growled loudly, and she thought she might have to reorganise her priorities once again. "What was that woman's name, Donna? How long's she been travelling with you?"

"Well, funny story, that." The Doctor's voice held a hint of reserve. "In linear time, she's been on the TARDIS for about six months. But we met way back at Christmas, 2007. She was beamed aboard the TARDIS, right after…" Rose didn't like the note in his voice and rushed to finish her ablutions, flung open the door, and then froze.

She'd never seen the Doctor looking so deliciously rumpled. The sheets were pulled down to his waist, and the first few buttons of his shirt were undone haphazardly, the sleeves rucked up to the elbows. His hair was a riot. He was propped up on the pillows with his head on his hand, and had obviously been watching the door, waiting for her to reappear. He patted the bed beside him, eyebrow raised in question, misunderstanding the nature of her hesitation. Rose swallowed hard. In that moment, it was very difficult for her not to go to him and snog him senseless. Reminding herself of the reason she'd rushed out of the bathroom in the first place, she went to the Doctor immediately, inferring what he was unwilling to say.

"After we talked?" she supplied, slipping her hand into the Doctor's.

He ran his other hand through his hair, ruffling it even more, letting out his breath in a big gust. "Yeah." They reclined against the headboard together. Rose nuzzled her cheek against the Doctor's as if by doing so she could erase the agonizing memory.

"So that's how she knew who I was," she mused softly. She'd been wondering about that.

"You thought I wouldn't talk about you?" the Doctor asked, sounding as though he already knew the answer. Rose shrugged. He'd never told her about any of his past companions, but she didn't want to bring that ancient history into this conversation. "Well, I did," the Doctor said, matter-of-factly. "It couldn't be avoided with Donna, since it was so soon afterwards. She said she didn't want to travel with me, back then; we met up again later. Before her, I travelled with someone else. Martha, her name was. She was brilliant. Medical student. Saved my life more times than I can count."

Rose didn't like the Doctor's tone again. "Is she…?"

"Oh! No, she's fine." The Doctor's eyes widened, but his grip on her hand tightened. "Saw her again a while back, actually, with Donna. She's on Earth, working for UNIT. She's a proper doctor now. But her family ended up in terrible danger because she was travelling with me. She didn't deserve to be treated the way I treated her. I needed someone to travel with, but I was not a good person to be travelling with. I was such a mess, and she… made me better," he admitted. Rose pressed her lips to the junction where his jaw met his throat, unthinkingly, responding to the desolation in his voice. His breath hitched, but otherwise he didn't react.

"So… how long's it been for you, Doctor?" Rose was cautious, but it seemed to be an opportune moment to ask the burning question.

"Three years," the Doctor replied, on a weary sigh. "Three years, two months, three days, twenty hours, including the year that never was." Rose swallowed her natural follow up question, sensing it was a story for another time. She squeezed his hand, knowing they were both reliving the hollow pain of their separation.

"Well, that explains how it's been three years for me too, when that universe runs ahead in time," she said, much more lightly than she felt. She was oddly grateful that the timelines matched up, that neither of them had had to suffer longer than the other. The Doctor stroked his thumb over hers and slid his arm around her shoulders, and Rose looked up into his dark, lambent eyes, knowing what was coming. The other big one.

"Rose… how are you here?" he asked, his hold around her flexing as though he were afraid that by questioning his good fortune it would be snatched away. Given the circumstances, Rose couldn't exactly blame him. She nestled herself further into his side, reassuring him of her nearness as she wondered where to begin.

"It was the darkness," she said after a moment. "The stars were going out."

"Wait," the Doctor interrupted sharply. "So you mean that wasn't just something you came up with to try and snap me out of it?"

"'Fraid not, Doctor," Rose replied, once again striving for levity.

"The stars are really going out?" he repeated, as though struggling to process the information. Rose nodded into his shoulder.

"One by one. We looked up at the sky and they were just dying." The Doctor was frowning, and it wasn't all his patented 'solve the puzzle' frown; Rose knew she would have to be more forthcoming. Besides, the information might actually help him figure out what was going on. "Basically, we were building this- this travel machine, this, er-" The Doctor was smirking at her, and she lost her train of thought. "This dimension cannon," she tried again, flustered now from the Doctor's expression, "so I could… Well, so I could…"

"What?" The Doctor raised a cheeky eyebrow at her, and a bubbly feeling began in Rose's chest.

"So I could come back," she finally admitted. The Doctor was beaming at her now, and Rose was suddenly breathless in the face of his obvious joy. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him smile like that. "Shut up," she groused playfully, nudging him with her shoulder, and he made that happy sound in the back of his throat that never failed to make her heart stutter. The urge to snog him senseless had not abated one iota, but they'd get to that. Later. Hopefully.

"Anyway, suddenly, it started to work and the dimensions started to collapse. Not just in that world, not just in yours, but the whole of reality," Rose continued, the fear and stress that she'd managed to forget since finding the Doctor starting to creep over her again. She fought back against the feeling resolutely. She was with the Doctor now. Whether or not they could do anything to stop it, it was the safest place to be. "Even the Void was dead. Something is destroying everything."

The Doctor wasn't smiling now. His eyes bored into their clasped hands as though they held the answer to the dilemma, and Rose fancied she could hear the cogs turning in his big Time Lord brain. Suddenly he looked up, piercing her with the same intensity.

"The Void was dead, you said." Rose bit her tongue; she hadn't meant to tell him that part yet, though she knew he would have figured it out soon enough anyway. "How on earth could you know that, Rose?" She fought the urge to look away.

"Well, the cannon only started working once the dimensions started collapsing," she hedged. "And the Void is what's between the dimensions, so…" She trailed off.

"So every time you jump, you travel through the Void," the Doctor growled. Rose braced herself and nodded.

The Doctor seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, then finally he ground out, "How long has this been going on?" Rose was tempted to lie, but knew scans were coming that might be able to measure how much Void stuff she'd collected. Besides which, the Doctor had been honest with her, so far as she could tell. She didn't want to be the first to break that delicate bubble.

"Four months," she admitted, and the Doctor's expression darkened further.

"Med bay," he ordered. "Now." He hauled her nearly bodily from the bed, and she followed him without protest, having known this was coming. The Doctor must have sensed her reluctance, because he turned to face her before they left the room.

"Rose, please. I know I don't have to tell you how dangerous that was. I'm happy it worked, of course, so happy you're here with me, but there are so many things that could have gone wrong. Yesterday, I let you look after me even though you'd been through your own ordeal. Please, let me do the same for you."

Rose nodded, wordless, and the Doctor caught her up in a brief hug before leading her out into the corridor.

"By the way, how are _you_ feeling, Doctor?" Rose asked.

"Fit as a fiddle," the Doctor answered airily, ill humour vanishing like a cloud. "Though what exactly is fit about a fiddle? I've never been able to figure that one out. You humans have the strangest idioms."

Rose laughed, leaning briefly into the Doctor's arm. "Sure sounds like you're back to normal," she conceded, looking up at him sidelong. The Doctor was watching her seriously.

"You came back to me yesterday," he said. "How could I be anything less?"

"Don't be daft," she shot back, squeezing his hand, noting as she did so that his face was already less lined, the shadows under his eyes less pronounced.

"I spent every day you were gone missing you," he said quietly. "I could have spent days working to repair my neural net from the damage done by the entity to achieve the same effect as spending a few hours with you, after I thought I'd never see you again."

They'd arrived outside the door of the med bay. Rose pulled the Doctor to a stop, and he turned to face her.

"I missed you too, Doctor," she said, wanting to repeat it now that they were both more emotionally stable. "I kept trying to find a way back, worked with that world's variation of Torchwood so we could develop the tech I needed. If the dimensions hadn't started collapsing, I would have found another way."

He was looking at her with a sort of disguised wonder. "You never gave up on me, Rose Tyler." He pulled her into his embrace, and they stood there for long moments. Rose knew it would be a while before they wouldn't have to be constantly touching.

"Nope," she said cheekily, grinning up at him. "You're stuck with me, remember?"

"Stuck with you?" the Doctor's voice rumbled low in his chest, and Rose's stomach flipped in memory of that conversation. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Yeah?" Rose pressed her face into his shirt, half to breathe in his scent and half to hide her expression, which must have been a study. His eyes had been so warm and sincere, never leaving hers.

The Doctor seemed to have come to some kind of a decision while she'd been away and she couldn't decide if she was delighted or confused. Perhaps a bit of both. Their relationship had been so nebulous before, and while she welcomed this new, open Doctor, she didn't want him to later regret things he'd said because he was so happy to have her back. She didn't think she'd be able to take it if he did. It was a conversation they needed to have soon.

But there was another one looming large ahead of her that she didn't think she'd be able to put off for much longer. The Doctor was opening the door to the med bay and the knot of anxiety in her gut tightened. It was true that she would prefer being examined by the Doctor over any of the Torchwood doctors, but that still didn't mean she was looking forward to it.

"All right, up on the table for me, Rose?" he ordered, already pulling on the brainy specs as he started up complicated pieces of machinery. Rose obeyed, hoping against hope that he wouldn't say what she knew was coming next. "And roll up your sleeve, I need to take a blood sample."

"Do you have to?" The words were out before she could stop them, and the Doctor's mouth turned down.

"You know I do, Rose, you've never been squeamish before." He pulled his specs off and regarded her for a long moment. "Rose, what are you trying to hide from me?"

She bit her lip, but it was time to face the music. Slowly, trying to keep her hands from shaking, she rolled up first one sleeve, and then the other. The Doctor sucked in a breath as she revealed what lay beneath the long sleeved top she wore under her heavy leather jacket. He traced a feather-light touch along the puckered scar tissue blazoning the inside of her left forearm from wrist to elbow, mirroring a similar burn mark on her right. They were the worst examples, but by no means the only injuries she'd sustained in her quest.

"Tell me." The Doctor's jaw was clenched so tightly he could barely speak.

"Well, um…" Rose wanted to pull her sleeves back down but the way the Doctor was holding her arm kept her from doing so. "The first tests-" The Doctor let out a sound that was half-growl, half moan. "The first tests _went off without a hitch_ ," she spoke over him firmly, not wanting him to believe that she was so foolhardy as all that, "landed me on some perfectly lovely planets - I might get you to take me back, to the ones that were in this universe, anyway - but our accuracy was way off, I didn't land in this universe nearly often enough. That's when I thought, if we could use my TARDIS key…"

His mouth quirked a little in appreciation of her cleverness but his eyes were still dark with worry and fear. "We figured out how to calibrate it so it would land me close to where the TARDIS is… has been… would be…" She waved her hand, knowing the Doctor would understand the vagaries of tenses. He nodded curtly once, and Rose sighed inwardly. "But, well, it threw off our navigation at first. Ended up landing on some barren asteroid in the middle of a plasma storm."

The Doctor winced, his grip on her upper arms tightening briefly. Rose winced internally, for different reasons. The storm had gotten her good. She was just lucky it hadn't disabled the hopper and stranded her there, but if the Doctor hadn't figured that out already she wasn't about to mention it to him. He already had his sonic out, scanning the affected area. Rose was proud of her battle scars, because she felt she'd earned them, but didn't like to think about them too much. Having them be the focus of attention made her uncomfortable.

His expression looked thunderous as he received the readings, but all he said was. "How many times did you jump?"

Rose shook her head. "Mostly my jumps didn't result in any injury. I had my daily checkup from medical and was back out in 24 hours."

A tic was jumping in the Doctor's jaw but he was otherwise still. " _Mostly._ " Rose nodded, wordless. His hands clenched into fists. "Show me."

Rose didn't see any point in demurring at this stage, so she nodded and pulled off her shirt. The Doctor's emotional state was such that he completely disregarded the revelation of her lacy bra, instead focusing on the pattern of tiny scars that decorated her collarbones.

"Ran afoul of the living vines on Callufrax Minor," she explained. "Not my fault, I remember what you told me, but I landed in the middle of a nest and I didn't happen to have a balloon on me." She smiled, remembering the effect helium had on the vines during their last encounter. The Doctor did not.

There were others, bruises that hadn't yet faded, scabs that were in the process of healing over, nothing serious. The Doctor took them all in silently.

"You did this," he said slowly, sounding as though every word was being wrenched from him. "Risked your life, for four months, leaving your family… because the stars were going out?" He shook his head as if the notion were daft. "If your version of Torchwood was brilliant enough to come up with this, you could have figured out some way of dealing with that."

"This _was_ our way of dealing with it!" Rose burst out. "Finding _you_! Once we found out it wasn't confined to that universe there wasn't much else we could do, was there? Not as if we had access to all sorts of trans-dimensional technology, given that block-transfer mathematics don't apply there - yes, I've done my research, no need to look so surprised."

The Doctor closed his mouth, but his eyes still sparked with fury as he argued, "But it had to be _you_ doing it?"

"Don't you dare say I'm not qualified!" Rose cut him off, getting worked up in turn. "I earned my spot; I fought for it when everyone else just saw me as the boss' daughter trying to steal the credit. I worked my arse off because I'd be damned if I let anyone else find you first!" She shut her mouth with a click but it was too late, the damage was done. She fought the urge to clap her hand over her mouth, keeping her chin defiantly raised.

The Doctor sighed, moving his hand from its grip on her arm to twine his fingers with hers and his voice was slightly softer as he replied, "I would never imply anything of the sort, Rose Tyler. There could be none better. But… you got _hurt_ ," he said, as if that was the only consideration that could matter. "You could have _died_! Why would you do that to yourself? Leaving your family behind? I'm not worth that!" His voice cracked a little as he threw the last words at her. They both looked at each other for a moment, breathing heavily. Finally, Rose relented with a short breath, sitting up straight to regard him frankly.

"Of course you are. Doctor, how many times do I have to say it?" She took both of his hands in hers, half-nakedness forgotten. "I made my choice, a very long time ago." She watched the emotion in his eyes shift sideways as he recognised her words. "I told you I was never gonna leave you, and I wasn't able to keep that promise." The Doctor showed signs of wanting to speak, and Rose squeezed his hands to show she wasn't done. "But I made you another promise, and it's one I intend to keep, no matter what."

"Why?" The Doctor breathed the word, and Rose would have been furious if she hadn't been able to tell from his expression that he was finally beginning to understand; the same expression he'd worn when he looked at her the last time they'd had this conversation, before everything went pear-shaped.

"I told you already," Rose said. "On that beach, on the worst day of my life, I told you why." It was different, saying the words when they were in the same room rather than a universe apart, and her heart trembled in her chest. It felt like they were standing on the edge of a precipice, only there was a sheer drop on both sides.

The apple in the Doctor's throat bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. "And I said: _Rose Tyler,_ " he rasped out, but suddenly Rose couldn't take the suspense.

"Yes, Doctor?" she babbled nervously, clutching his hands like a lifeline. "And how was that sentence gonna end? ' _Rose Tyler,_ I'm going to miss you,' or ' _Rose Tyler_ , you're the best mate I ever had,' or ' _Rose Tyler,_ you left the oven running again,' or…"

The Doctor gently freed his hands, running his fingers through her hair behind her ears to cup her face, and Rose shut up immediately. "Rose Tyler," he said simply, his eyes unfathomably dark and yet brilliant as stars. "I love you."

* * *

Rose inhaled sharply and the Doctor held his breath, knowing she'd just told him that her feelings hadn't changed and yet still unsure of her reaction. Her eyes fluttered shut and he bit back a curse, sure he'd managed to bollocks it up somehow, about to stammer an apology or find some way to fix it, to make it up to her. Before he could do anything, however, her eyes snapped open again, and they _blazed._ The Doctor's mouth went dry.

She reached up and grasped the collar of his shirt, pulling his head down until his face was an inch from hers. He still hadn't taken a breath, part of him still expecting a slap. Rose licked her lips, and his eyes involuntarily traced the movement.

"'M gonna kiss you now," she told him, firmly and deliberately. "That all right?"

The Doctor nodded frantically, as if there was a chance of deliberation; it was more than all right, it was a brilliant idea, and why hadn't he thought of it already? Thoughts continued to chase themselves around in circles but then Rose crashed their lips together and every single one flew out of his mind. Rose's lips were so soft, and so, so warm, molding themselves around his and branding them with her human heat. Everything in him gave way before the sensation. The Doctor fancied he had a fairly good imagination, but the few times he'd allowed himself to fantasise about kissing Rose had never gotten anywhere close to how _amazing_ it felt.

Then Rose was pulling back slightly, and he bit back the whimper of protest that rose from his chest. As revelatory as the kiss had been, it had still been relatively chaste, and had opened the floodgates to a yawning maw of need that the Doctor had been suppressing - well, since fairly early on into his ninth regeneration, if he were honest with himself - a need which had only sharpened since they'd been separated. He nearly lost his mind right then and there, aching to pursue her retreating lips, but Rose only separated their mouths enough for speech, her breath puffing against lips which were hyper-sensitised, so that he was feeling her words, rather than hearing them.

"You have _no idea_ how long I've been waiting for that, Doctor." Her voice was low and sultry and started fires burning in interesting places. He smiled at that, despite himself, when all he really wanted to do was recapture her lips with his.

"Oh, I'm fairly certain I have some idea," he teased gently, just barely holding back the endearment that was on the tip of his tongue. _About as long as I've wanted it, I shouldn't think. Blimey but I'm an idiot._

Her lips quirked, as if she'd caught his thought, and he couldn't resist any longer. He pressed forward to reconnect their lips, prompting a moan of relief from both of them. Though she'd initiated it, Rose had been mostly passive during their last kiss. This time, her hands were everywhere: in his hair, down his back, cupping his cheeks, like she couldn't decide where to put them. It wasn't that the Doctor was in any way opposed to this - in fact, he very much wanted it to continue, with fewer layers between them and many, many more options - but it spoke to a level of desperation that didn't suit Rose, and he pulled back, causing a line to form between her flawless eyes as she blinked hazily at him.

"Why'd you stop?" she muttered, tugging on his collar. "Wanna -"

"And so do I," he assured her, gently loosening her grip from the fabric and twining his hands with hers instead. "But you can slow down a bit, love," he said, realising he'd failed to check himself this time a moment too late, and something flashed through her eyes that he couldn't recognise. He couldn't make a joke about not going anywhere, or having lots of time - might never be able to, truth be told. He looked at Rose, who was biting her lip, and not in the sexy way that drove him spare. She looked… uncertain, a far cry from the confident seductress she'd been earlier. He cast his mind over the past few minutes, wondering what could have happened to make her doubt herself in such a way. She was staring down at their joined hands, shoulders already starting to hunch protectively, when it finally clicked. She wasn't sure how long this would last, sure he'd change his mind.

He linked his arms around her neck, encouraging her to do the same. When he was sure he had her attention, he met her eyes seriously.

"Rose Tyler," he said, "I've been an idiot. I've loved you for a long time - oh, such a very long time. But there were… considerations, I thought, and nine hundred years of precedent, and for too long I let things that didn't matter mean too much."

Rose swallowed, her hands twitching nervously against the short hairs at the back of his neck and making him want to swallow her uncertainties in a snog that would continue until she felt every iota of his love for her. But it was imperative for him that she understand this.

"But, the curse of the Time Lords, Doctor," she said, tentatively. "That's not just… a consideration, that's not nothing. I'll wither and die and you'll be left on your own and I don't want that."

The Doctor recognised his own words, and not for the first time, wondered if the law against crossing his own timestream was implemented in order to keep him from going back in time and punching himself in the face. He pushed that thought aside. The self-recrimination could wait until later; right now he had the most important being in the universe to reassure.

"My beautiful, strong, brilliant Rose," he breathed, wondering what he could have possibly done to deserve such devotion. "I told you all that, and you listened, and you still promised me forever. You, with your precious human life, chose to tie it to mine. And because I'm a bloody cad, I never told you how much of a gift that was. Which is why you're sitting there right now thinking that I only finished my sentence because I lost you. And you're right, but not for the reasons you think," he said. "I wasted so much of the time I was given with you, because I was afraid of what would happen when I lost it. And then I lost it anyway," he said, shuddering slightly as the memories crashed through him, and Rose did the same. "And I realised that whether I spend one year with you or a hundred, I will always regret more the things left undone than the things we did."

Rose's eyes were round as saucers. He leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers, reassuring himself of her nearness. "Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you," he murmured, and felt her tremour. "But the idea of squandering the time I've been given, keeping you at arm's length… I can't do it. Not any more. I love you, Rose Tyler. Forever."

"Doctor," Rose whispered, and he wrapped her in his arms, feeling like he might never let her go. She was saying something next to his ear, and even with his superior hearing it took him a moment to make out individual words. His hearts clenched when he realised what it was - the same three words, over and over, as though she were trying to make up for all the times she hadn't been able to say them. The Doctor carded his fingers through her hair, wanting to soothe her, murmuring reassurances in her ear, peppering the top of her head with kisses as he kicked himself a thousand times for ever causing his precious girl to feel this way.

Eventually, she quieted, and the Doctor pressed one final kiss to her forehead before pulling back to meet her eyes again.

"Thank you, Doctor," she said sincerely, as he gently wiped her tears away with his thumb. He shook his head; daft girl, thanking him for anything. She bit her lip again, and this time the expression was much more pleasant. "Could… can we get back to the kissing now?"

He chuckled, running a hand down her mostly-bare back, making her shiver. "I think you'll find I insist."

Their lips met again, and if the Doctor had thought their last kisses had been perfection, this one blew them all away. With both of them on the same page at last, the passion given and received made the Doctor's head spin, and before he was aware of choosing to do so his hands were sliding across Rose's back with far different intent, warm pleasure sparking in every one of his cells at the contact. In response, Rose bit down on his bottom lip and he gasped at the unexpected sensation, rocking against her. She seemed to take his gasp as the encouragement she needed to slip her tongue into his mouth and the Doctor met her eagerly, feeling a bolt of heat spread through him at how naturally she'd taken control of the kiss.

Then he was aware of nothing but the dance of their tongues, the _taste_ of Rose nearly sending him over the edge. Beneath the minty overlay of her toothpaste, Rose tasted almost sugary-sweet, like nectar, or perhaps that was just a result of how badly he'd desired to taste her. It was a perfect compliment to the way she smelled, all delicate cherry and subtle musk and _Rose_ that had once belonged to the vial of perfume he kept for his hardest days and he now got to associate with his best once again.

He broke the kiss to inhale deeply, remembering that humans didn't have respiratory bypass. He would have said that Rose's little pants as she recovered her breath against his mouth was the best sound in the universe, had he not already heard her ragged voice professing her endless love for him in his ear. Her skin was soft and smooth under his hands and his touches turned more purposeful, sliding under her bra strap and drawing a groan from both of them as Rose attacked his lips again. The Doctor played with the clasp of the garment, toying with the idea of removing it before continuing their activities, when a loud voice stopped him in his tracks.

" _Oh my God,_ I didn't need to see that!" squawked the very irate ginger in the doorway, one hand covering her eyes as she sidled into the room. Rose hastily pulled her shirt back over her head as the Doctor jumped back, and he didn't miss how she made sure to pull her sleeves down over her forearms before calling out,

"'S ok, Donna, I'm decent!"

"It's not _you_ I'm worried about, Blondie!" Donna groused, peeking through her fingers at them. "Nothing there I haven't seen in my own mirror. _Spaceman_ , on the other hand…"

"The Doctor?" Rose sounded confused. Aside from having his shirtsleeves rolled up and his buttons mostly undone, the Doctor was fully dressed.

"Yes, him! With the arms, and the looking like a regular bloke with his hands all over you, it's _freaky!_ "

Rose stifled a giggle, as the Doctor let out a long-suffering sigh and began to straighten his disheveled appearance. Not that there was all that much he could do - his shirt was hopelessly wrinkled and his hair was surely a disaster, but he shook out his sleeves and did up the rest of the buttons on his shirt in an effort to make Donna feel more comfortable.

"Honestly I dunno what you see in him, Rose," his companion said, still pointedly facing away from the two of them. "Skinny streak of alien nothing, he is, you must get paper cuts off him!"

"Worth it," Rose sang, favouring him with her trademark tongue-touched smile for the first time since appearing in this universe, and it was all the Doctor could do not to draw it into his mouth right then and there, the way he'd imagined doing for years.

Donna groaned, and the Doctor glared at her, more than a little cross at the interruption as Rose kicked her legs unconcernedly, mirth alight in her eyes. "Donna, was there a reason you came in here?"

His best mate crossed her arms. " _I've_ been up for hours, and I thought I'd try and see where you two got to, see if you wanted to join me for brunch. See if I try that again." But the Doctor could see in her eyes the memory of the way she'd seen them last, in a quivering knot on the floor of the galley, and felt a surge of affection for his friend's concern.

"All right, we'll be there in a minute," he muttered, but he smiled his gratitude at Donna, who rolled her eyes knowingly before practically fleeing the room.

The Doctor looked back down at Rose, who was still grinning at him. "This was your plan all along, wasn't it?" he asked lightly, playing with her fingers. "I never did get to run my tests."

He could tell from his _thorough_ oral examination of her chemical makeup that there was nothing seriously wrong with Rose, although the sonic had picked up on some very strange readings that he wished he had time to follow up on. Rose made an effort to look suitably quelled, but the Doctor's amusement faded slightly at the reminder of what had gotten them here.

"Would you at least let me take care of your bruises?" he asked quietly. "I could fix everything, of course, but it'll take more time. I just don't want you to be in pain." Rose nodded silently and pulled her shirt off again. The Doctor set the sonic to repair blood vessels and went to work, fixing the bruises from her most recent jump as well as older ones that had yet to fade. He'd noted how tenderly Rose had been moving that morning and leaned in to brush his lips across her cheek once he'd finished.

"Why don't you go take a shower while I make us some breakfast and then we'll start to formulate a plan to deal with these stars of yours." Rose made a noise of protest when he started to pull away, pursuing him for a much longer kiss.

The Doctor groaned as he broke away, knowing that if he let it go on for much longer they'd never get anything done. Tempting as the thought was, they did have a multiverse in danger. Rose sauntered out of the med bay, turning to wink at him as she left and the Doctor hadn't known it was possible to be this happy, even if it meant he did have to redirect a certain tightness in his trousers.

After a quick detour to his room for a shower and a change of clothes, he was in the galley making a fry-up for them, while Donna sat watching and nursing a coffee. She'd greeted him with a pretend shudder when he'd entered, before slapping him lightly on the arm with a huge smile.

"I'm happy for you, Doctor," she'd said, and the Doctor could see how worried she'd been since Midnight. He'd thanked her, pulling her into a brief hug, and now things were back to normal.

He hadn't been able to tamp down on the tiny bit of anxiety, not being within arm's reach of Rose, nor hide his sigh of relief when she entered the galley ten minutes later, and he knew that her much shorter than usual shower was due to the same anxiety. She came to him immediately and he snaked an arm around her waist, flipping the eggs single handed as she leaned into his shoulder - _still here_ \- before pulling away to make herself a cup of tea.

Over brunch, Rose and the Doctor gave Donna the abbreviated story of their separation and how they'd found each other again. When the Doctor explained stiffly about his hallucinations of Rose, Donna listened in stunned disbelief, clearly trying to process the idea that such a thing had been happening to her best mate under her very nose and she hadn't noticed.

The Doctor, for his part, was merely pleased he'd succeeded in hiding it so well, but Rose ran her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck and pressed a kiss to his lower jaw in sympathy, and he was able to push the memories away, turning his head to give her a quick peck on the lips. Rose smiled.

"Look at you two," Donna cooed. "I know you haven't seen each other for a while but anyone would think this is early days, the way the two of you are carrying on!"

The Doctor shot a sideways glance over at Rose and saw that she was doing the same. Donna, of course, was quick to notice.

"Oh my God, it is, isn't it? But you only just got back, so that means…" Her eyes widened comically, and she leaned in to punch the Doctor hard in the arm.

"Ow!" he protested, rubbing the affected area. "What was that for?"

" _That_ was for being a giant space dumbo, Dumbo," Donna said. "And _you_!" She rounded on Rose, who looked taken aback. The Doctor was all set to step in and defend her, when Donna wrapped her in a giant embrace.

"You deserve a medal, putting up with him the way you do," she said, her voice slightly muffled. "You're telling me you did all that work to get back to him and you hadn't even _shagged_ yet?"

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. "Well, actually, Donna…" he trailed off as she silenced him with a glare.

"Right. This is barmy," she asserted, with a toss of her head. "The two of you are bonkers, I can't possibly stay here. You're dropping me off home." The Doctor felt his stomach plummet as Rose began to protest.

"I don't wanna force you out, Donna, really, you don't have to leave-" But Donna was having none of it.

"Nope! You two lovebirds need some time to get _reacquainted_ and I don't much fancy being here while you do. I'm going home, and you, Spaceman, are going to take Rose to the most fabulous, least-dangerous spa planet you know of until you've made it up to her properly for being so ridiculously daft. You can pick me back up once you've got all that canoodling out of your systems."

The Doctor started breathing again. He wasn't losing Donna. He wasn't going to be forced to choose between Rose and his best mate. Rose was looking up at him and grinning and he was glad he hadn't said anything. After the incident during the Sontaran invasion, he'd never have heard the end of it. He smiled at his friend, touched once again by her consideration. "Donna Noble, you have got a deal."

Out in the console room a half hour later, Donna was still harping on the Doctor. "I know you _can_ be back five minutes after you drop me off, but Rose was telling me about the time you came back _twelve months_ later so I am giving you twenty-four hours, Sunshine!"

The Doctor looked back at Rose, who had her arm wrapped around one of the coral struts, clearly overjoyed at being back in the TARDIS again, and she gave him an unrepentant grin. She seemed to be grinning a lot, recently, and he knew he was too. The stars were still going out, and he knew he had to deal with that, and soon, but for right now, nothing in the universe was more important to him than spending more time with Rose to make up for all they'd missed, exploring the new intimacy between them. He pushed the problem to the back of his magnificent brain, where it continued to niggle at him. It was a feeling he was very familiar with.

"Oooh, better give it about a week either side, Donna," Rose teased, blithely ignoring the Doctor's baleful expression at her lack of support, though inwardly he couldn't be more pleased. Having Rose, the real Rose, back on the TARDIS, joking and laughing, was like a dream he hoped he would never wake from.

"All right, if you've both finished having a go at my driving record?" Rose waggled her eyebrows at him and he knew she wasn't remotely close, so he sent them into flight to forestall her reply.

Her unfettered laugh rang freely from the rafters once they were in motion and the Doctor's heart soared, already thinking of places he could take her. Remembering they'd never managed to make it to Barcelona, he put it at the top of the list. His last attempt at a leisure planet still weighed heavily in his mind, but he had a feeling the TARDIS would assist him with this, if her reaction to Rose's return was any indication.

They landed with a tremendous crash that sent them all tumbling to the grating, and the Doctor felt a wave of mischief from the TARDIS' side of their bond telling him she'd landed more forcefully than necessary in order to make Rose laugh.

It worked; Rose rolled onto her side, fairly howling with laughter, and the Doctor wasn't able to keep himself from her any longer. He offered her a hand up, the way he'd done so many times before, and she gripped it firmly, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet and into his arms.

"Oh, I _missed_ this," she said warmly, wiping her eyes as her mirth subsided, and the Doctor nuzzled the top of her head, inhaling the comforting aroma of her shampoo.

"She missed you, too," the Doctor murmured, clutching her closer, though Rose's merriment had healed his hearts more thoroughly than anything else could. "Almost as much as I did." The console room lights dimmed in apparent disapproval of his assertion, and the Doctor pressed a kiss to the tip of Rose's nose as she giggled.

"All right, that's it, I'm out." Donna's voice snapped them back to reality and they jumped guiltily.

"Sorry, Donna," Rose began, but the smile the ginger turned on them was fond and she shook her head.

"Daft, the pair of ya," she said again, hoisting her overnight bag to her shoulder as she moved towards. "See you later."

She pointed a threatening finger towards the Doctor. "Twenty-four hours, mister. See to it!"

The Doctor crossed his hearts and she nodded once, apparently satisfied. Rose darted from his side to embrace the other woman, leaning to whisper something in her ear. Donna's eyes flicked to the Doctor and back to Rose before she nodded, smiling through watery eyes.

They saw Donna to the doors, opening them to reveal an ordinary street on an ordinary day. The Doctor didn't miss how Rose kept checking the sky as if expecting to see zeppelins there, and he wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her grounded in this reality. They hadn't really needed to leave the TARDIS, but the Doctor suspected Rose needed proof that this was still the Earth she remembered.

Donna waved as she began to walk away, and Rose gave the Doctor a smile as they turned to go back inside.

That was when the ground began to shake. Rose clutched the Doctor, trying to keep her balance, and Donna stumbled, a few feet away. Milk bottles on a nearby truck clinked together alarmingly, and slate tiles began to plummet from a few roofs to shatter on the asphalt.

Rose looked up at the Doctor, eyes wide, as the shaking not only continued, but intensified. "Earthquake?"

"Donna!" he shouted in response. "Get back to the TARDIS!" Seismic events were rare enough in London that the Doctor wasn't inclined to believe this was a natural occurrence. He tightened his grip on Rose at the thought of encountering a dangerous situation so soon after finding each other again. He pushed her ahead of him into the TARDIS, his mind already whirring with possibilities, each more dire than the last.

 _I_ _will not_ _lose her again_ , he vowed, clenching his jaw until it ached.

Donna made it back a few moments later, hardly closing the doors behind her before even the TARDIS shook wildly. They all clung to the railing to stay on their feet. Finally, the jostling stopped. The Doctor ran his hands over Rose's arms, silently checking for injuries.

"What the hell was that?" Donna exclaimed, sounding slightly breathless.

"Don't know," the Doctor admitted. He hated not knowing, especially when Rose was involved. "Best check outside."

Rose let out a sound of surprise as the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors again. Instead of the suburban scene they were expecting, they saw only a few pieces of space junk floating in the void.

"We're in space?" Donna sounded incredulous. "How did that happen? What did you do?"

" _I_ haven't done anything," the Doctor protested, bounding to the console, getting eerie reminders of their first meeting. "I wasn't even over here!" Rose shadowed him, for which the Doctor was grateful as he examined the scanner readings.

"We haven't moved," the Doctor intoned, feeling dread settle into the pit of his stomach. "We're fixed." Rose slipped her hand into his, and the Doctor clutched it as he double- and triple-checked the readout. "It can't have. No." He looked at Rose and saw his own fear reflected in her eyes.

"The TARDIS is still in the same place," he said, looking back at Donna and the nothingness out the doors beyond her because if he saw that look in Rose's eyes any longer he'd give into the temptation to fly far away and forget he ever saw any of this. "The TARDIS is still in the same place, but the Earth has gone." Rose squeezed his hand, and he wrapped it in both of his without looking at her. Donna just stared at him, open-mouthed.

"The entire planet," the Doctor repeated, almost to himself. "It's gone."


	3. Earth-That-Was

Rose had never been more glad that she'd found the Doctor when she had. She'd been able to help him recover from his trauma after Midnight, and now it seemed she would be there to actually fulfil her mission, to fix what was happening with the stars going out. She felt sure that's what this was.

She could feel it in the way the Doctor was gripping her hand so tightly it was starting to go numb, squeezing rhythmically as if to periodically reassure himself she was still there. Rose understood it, the fear that she would be ripped away if he released her. While she blessed her timing, she might have wished for more of an interval to let them all recover before diving into another adventure, especially one as serious as this was shaping up to be. She firmed her resolve. She was his hand to hold, and he was hers. No matter what happened.

That knowledge was reflected in his eyes as he glanced between her and the scanner, the deeper undercurrent of fear tempered by the happiness of having the old team back together at last.

"All right then, Lewis," he said with forced brightness, knowing that she would recognise the attempt for what it was, "It appears we have a missing planet."

It took Rose only a fraction of a second to decide to play along. "How do you suggest we proceed, Sarge?" Her reward was the look of pure delight that crossed the Doctor's face at the return to their old banter, the reminder of their Olympic adventure, before the Doctor had even sensed the storm that would ultimately triumph against them for a time. He waggled his eyebrows at her.

"How else do you find missing things, Lewis? You look for them!" He bent over the console, typing with purpose, one-handed so as not to let her go. "Scans initiated!" He crowed after a few seconds, spinning away to adjust controls on the other side. For all that she could see through his façade of cheer, Rose's heart burned with love as she watched him. To forestall the bout of melancholy he was so desperately keeping at bay, she responded brightly,

"Any leads on suspects, Sarge?" He winked at her before frowning pensively. "This is a bigger fish than our usual fry, yeah?" She couldn't keep the slightest uncertainty from her voice as she continued, "I don't recommend our usual tactics for this particular mission."

"Divide and conquer?" The grin was still plastered on the Doctor's face but his voice held the same note as hers. "That's a negative, Lewis. HQ wants us to stick together on this one."

He came around the console and caught her up in an exuberant embrace. And if his grip was ever so slightly tighter than their friendly play had warranted, she certainly wasn't about to call him on it.

"Oi! What the bloody hell are you both on about?" An angry voice made them both jump, having momentarily forgotten about Donna's presence. "When you're through having a good flirt, maybe you could spare a thought for the fact that my _planet_ , the _Earth_ , is no longer here?" Her eyes flashed at them and her arms were tightly crossed over her chest as if to hold herself together. "Has it even occurred to you that if the Earth's been moved, they've lost the Sun? Or were you too busy with your little roleplay to remember that my Mum and Granddad were down there?"

Rose had to remind herself that Donna had never seen the way she and the Doctor reacted in the face of danger. She felt badly that she'd gotten so caught up in the moment that she'd forgotten they weren't alone, that there were more important things going on than her and the Doctor's reunion.

"Sorry, Donna," she muttered. "'S just what we do, yeah? We're on the case." They'd fallen into their old ways so naturally, it hadn't occurred to her that Donna might feel differently.

The woman shrugged off her apology. "Doctor, just tell me," she pressed. "My family. They're all right, aren't they?" When the Doctor didn't answer immediately she inhaled a sharp breath. "Oh my God. They're dead. Are they dead?"

She sounded so lost and distraught, and Rose went around the console to lay a hand on Donna's arm. She understood the fear for family; felt it even now, with no way of knowing what was happening in the parallel world.

"That's what we're trying to figure out, Donna," the Doctor said more calmly, his exuberance vanishing as he focussed most of his attention on the scanner. Rose couldn't help but notice his casual use of 'we' and felt a little jolt of warmth. "For right now, I'm sorry. I don't have any answers. But I'm not going to assume they're dead until we've exhausted every other option. We'll do everything we can to find them." He met Rose's gaze and grinned briefly. "Promise."

Donna gripped Rose's hand on her arm. The shadows in the Doctor's smile, the cracks in his façade, were plain as day to Rose, but it was almost a relief, that she could still read the Doctor so thoroughly after all this time. Despite the strength of Donna's grip on her arm, Rose didn't have enough of a handle on the other woman's personality to know if she could read the Doctor as well. Her reaction to their earlier banter indicated that it was no longer the Doctor's default reaction, and she wondered what else had changed. Her heart twisted a little.

"Don't worry, Donna," Rose murmured. "If there's anything to be done, you know the Doctor can do it. Just let him figure it out for a tick, yeah?"

Donna nodded automatically but still didn't seem completely reassured, and Rose could see why, watching the Doctor, who was now exuding a distinct aura of uncertainty. She bit her lip. She'd often thought of the Doctor as the shepherd of the universe, but he'd always considered the Earth his primary responsibility. For it to have been taken right out from under them was frightening, but not nearly as much as the Doctor not knowing why.

"That's my family," Donna said slowly, and Rose recognised the symptoms of shock. "My whole world."

"I know," Rose soothed, as the Doctor glanced up briefly from the viewscreen. "And I'm so sorry, Donna. But you've got to trust the Doctor. He'll find them, okay?"

Rose felt oddly detached from the situation. The Earth was her world too, she supposed, but given that she no longer had any connection to anyone on the version that had just disappeared, and had never truly felt at home in Pete's World either, she couldn't help but feel like the odd one out in their group. She was concerned about the fate of the planet and all the people on it, of course, but right now she was more worried about the Doctor. His eyes were still glued to the screen, but he'd stopped adjusting the dials several seconds before and now seemed to be trying to will the results into something more favourable.

"There's no readings. Nothing." His tone betrayed his utter disbelief at what the TARDIS was telling him. "Not a trace, not even a whisper." He pushed back from the console, raking his hand through his hair in agitation. "Oh, that is fearsome technology."

Responding to the Doctor's unaccustomed fear and anxiety, Rose went to him, taking the hand not currently resting at the base of his neck. He looked down at her automatically, but his eyes were calculating, a million miles away.

Rose couldn't understand it, either. They'd been right there – technically, they still were. She thought of the reassurance she'd just given Donna. She'd had utmost confidence in the Doctor's ability to sort things out. To have that called into question shook her. She thought back to her resolution. That was why she was here: to keep the three of them going.

"Okay, so the Earth has vanished," she said, trying to approach it like a problem to be solved instead of a terrifying reality. "But it hasn't taken us along with it, even though we were on the surface. Does that give us a clue to the method, at least, Doctor?" She spoke softly in the oppressive air of the room.

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, making a noncommittal sound. "Good thinking, Rose, but no. It does narrow it down some, but it's mostly because the TARDIS' coordinates are fixed according to universal constants. It just means that whatever happened hasn't changed the laws of the universe, which is something, I suppose."

Rose frowned. "But to leave nothing for the TARDIS to find? I mean, how do you lose a planet?" She'd meant it as a rhetorical question, but Donna started.

"That's just what I said to Miss Foster, remember?" she said, a spark of life finally emerging in her voice. "She said the Adipose breeding planet was lost, but she didn't care about the politics, or something."

The Doctor's eyes widened, and he started typing almost immediately. "Adding Adipose III to the list. Brilliant, Donna!"

Rose settled herself on the jumpseat and smiled encouragingly at the other woman. She hadn't been privy to the pair's adventures, but Donna seemed more than capable of putting them together. After a moment, however, her brain caught up with the implication of Donna's words and she leaned in under the pretext of watching the Doctor work to distract from the pain that had clenched itself into a knot in her chest.

She'd seen Donna once before. It was a memory she almost hadn't formed, one of the earliest jumps when she could barely do more than flash in and out of universes. She'd looked around, seen the aftermath of some accident on a world that looked like her Earth when a ginger woman had come running up to her, babbling about keys in bins. Her fingers spasmed with the need to touch the Doctor but she wouldn't distract him from what he was doing. To think she'd been so _close_...

She shook her head to clear it of such thoughts. Donna was speaking again.

"What about Pyrovillia?" It was clear she was on a roll, and Rose could tell from the Doctor's sudden stillness that he was properly impressed now. "Way back, when we were in Pompeii, Lucius said Pyrovillia had gone missing."

The Doctor was nodding. "Donna Noble, you're a star! Adding it to the list!" He frowned in thought. "Where else," he repeated to himself. "Where else lost? Oh!" he exclaimed, and both women jumped. "The Lost Moon of Poosh!" He started typing again, but Rose had another question.

"But Doctor, I don't understand. No one was ever interested in what happened to these planets? I mean, planets going missing? You'd think someone'd notice."

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck again, tugging on his ear. "That's two just while I've been with Donna. _I_ should've noticed. Maybe a low-grade perception filter? I wonder if..."

Rose cut him off before he could warm up to a full-fledged ramble. "But what does it mean for us now, Doctor?"

He looked sheepishly at her, then let out a sigh. "Well, I've set up scans looking for similarities between the four missing planets, but people have written dissertations on the Lost Moon of Poosh; it'll take too long, even for the TARDIS. Too many variables."

"So what do we do?" Donna echoed Rose's sentiments.

"We've got to get help," the Doctor answered finally, not looking at either of them.

"From where?" Donna voice sounded incredulous.

Rose had to admit she had a point and looked up at the Doctor in shock.

She'd heard him claim to be the universe's highest authority on more than one occasion. He was the being other beings looked to for help. The idea of the Doctor needing to ask for it instead was objectively terrifying, and Rose didn't know what was worse; the words, or the emotionless way in which the Doctor said them. He dropped his hand to his side and looked solemnly at both women in turn.

His gaze recalled the way he'd looked at her when she'd first landed in this universe, shadowed and leaden, as though the last few hours of levity hadn't happened.

"Ladies," he said at last, with the air of someone making an impossible decision, "I'm taking you to the Shadow Proclamation." A heavy silence fell attendant at his words, largely due to the significance he seemed to place on them than any actual recognition on the part of the two women. The Doctor didn't appear to notice. "Hold tight."

He threw the TARDIS into flight and Rose recognised the signs of him beginning to withdraw, the way he usually did in the face of a particularly dangerous adventure, the way he hadn't done for ages, before they were separated. She let him go, for the time being, hoping that she'd be able to pull him back before his coping mechanism got them all killed. Whatever conclusion he'd come to that had driven him to ask for help, it was bad enough that he wasn't even seeking comfort in their normal banter.

The Doctor _had_ changed, she realised. The Doctor she'd known would never have been thrown into a state like this for anything, leads or no leads. But she'd seen the state he'd been in when she'd returned. Knowing what the Doctor had endured with his hallucinations, she shuddered to think of how difficult the three years had been for him.

It was a rough flight, giving the Doctor a perfect excuse to focus on the console rather than either of them. Rose clung to the jumpseat, knowing it was a better place to be than having two people in the Doctor's way, and also knowing that Donna, with her worry for the Earth, needed to be there. But she hadn't forgotten her goal of keeping the Doctor grounded, even if she couldn't engage him in playful dialogue.

"So the Shadow Proclamation is a _place_?" Rose asked, curiosity seeping into her voice despite their current situation. "You said that to the Nestene Consciousness, didn't you? The night we met."

They shared a memory-laden glance. So much had happened since then. Rose couldn't subdue a little frisson of fear. It hadn't done the Doctor much good in the end, that time at least. He didn't invoke the words often, but when he did it was usually a sign that things were about to get very bad.

"I thought it was just something you said when you wanted to intimidate the bad guys." Rose tried to joke.

The Doctor quirked his lips in her direction but there wasn't an ounce of humour in the expression. "Well, yes and no."

"So go on then, what is the Shadow Proclamation anyway?" Donna asked, sounding as though she were making a concerted effort to sound like her normal self.

"It's a posh name for police," the Doctor explained, for the benefit of both women. "Outer space police. The Shadow Proclamation is a universal code of law, and they're the organization that enforces it." His voice held none of its usual bubbly rambling, and his motions at the console were tight and controlled, devoid of exuberant flourish. "Here we go!"

They all got shaken about, even the Doctor, who stretched his length across the console, but this time Rose got the sense that the TARDIS was behaving herself as much as possible and the playful atmosphere of their last trip had vanished without a trace.

The Doctor's eyes met hers while he was on his back and she saw once again the fear she'd tried so hard to soothe away. She tried to smile at him, but his eyes roved over her face as if he wanted to commit it to memory.

Almost before they materialised, the Doctor was headed for the doors, grabbing up his coat. Rose went to him, but he'd shrugged into it before she could reach him and she was left with nothing to do but brush her hands over his shoulders. She fought down a surge of disappointment and sorrow.

It had always been their routine, that she helped him into his coat - ' _see, that's why I need you, Rose Tyler. You help me look impressive.' 'Impressive? You?' 'Oi!'_ \- but it was obvious he hadn't had anyone to do that for him since she'd been gone and she hated the additional reminder of how long they'd been apart.

The Doctor turned swiftly to face her, an apology in his eyes, but Rose shook her head. There wasn't time to explain the real reason she was upset. Instead she took advantage of the moment to cup his cheek with her hand, giving him the reassurance she'd been aching to since the Earth had vanished.

"Doctor, remember, the stuff of legend, yeah?" she said quietly, mindful of Donna waiting behind them. "We'll sort it out - together."

There wasn't time for anything more, but the Doctor's expression eased marginally and Rose counted that as a win. She didn't blame him for his fear. Given everything that had happened, it was even rational. She wouldn't promise that she'd never leave him; she'd seen what the universe had done with those words and she couldn't do that to him again. But she could show him, with her actions, that she wasn't about to go without a fight.

The Doctor placed his hand over hers and lowered it so they were twined together at their sides, and set his jaw resolutely. Rose had only seen him like this on a few occasions, when he pulled on the persona of the Last of the Time Lords, ancient and commanding. She'd always found both of her Doctors sexy. Endearing, even. Sometimes it was easy to forget he wasn't human. But whenever he got like this, the lines of his face lent him an austere, otherworldly beauty, and Rose was forcibly reminded that he was an alien, one of the most powerful aliens left alive, who watched the turn of the universe and carried starlight in his wake.

 _And I just spent the morning snogging him_.

He nodded once to her, and once to Donna, who looked slightly heartened. It was impossible not to be; this Doctor exuded confidence. Next to him, Rose reflected, she and Donna looked equally capable. United, they stepped out of the TARDIS to face the inevitable.

Immediately, they were faced with an armed platoon of what looked like rhinos, who cocked their weapons as they appeared. Rose and Donna followed the Doctor's example, raising their hands in the universal gesture of surrender. Rose didn't miss how the Doctor subtly placed himself in front of her.

The rhino said something in its own language, and it took Rose a moment to realise that the TARDIS wasn't translating as she usually did. The Doctor, of course, didn't need a translation, and responded in kind. The platoon immediately snapped to attention, and the trio dropped their hands. If this had been any other day, her Doctor would have favoured them with a goofy 'look how clever I am' grin. Today was not that day, however, and he merely barked a curt acknowledgement before following the rhinos.

Instead of explicitly reaching for her hand, the Doctor held his hand loosely at his side, and Rose was quick to take him up on the discreet encouragement. Once her fingers were linked with his, he squeezed them in gratitude. Rose shot a subtle glance at Donna on his other side. She seemed to be holding up remarkably well. The Doctor had said it long ago: he only took the best.

They were led by the rhinos to a room that resembled nothing more than a posh foyer, with a large glass staircase and conference table in the centre. A tall, stately woman rose to greet them. If they'd been on Earth, Rose would have called her an albino; her pale skin, white hair and red eyes, contrasted by her black garments, gave her an ethereal air, but there was something about her - perhaps her red-rimmed eyes and lacquered nails, or her measured, emotionless tone - that put Rose on edge. She pulled her attention back to the conversation with effort.

"Time Lords are the stuff of legend," the woman, who had introduced herself as the Architect, was saying. "They belong in the myths and whispers of the Higher Species. You cannot possibly exist." She paced the room as she spoke almost tauntingly.

"Well, either you're right and there's no one left in the universe who can help you," Rose drawled, the woman's attitude putting her already fraying nerves on edge, "or you've got one standing in your foyer." Rose watched the woman take in their clasped hands with a condescending smirk and fought the urge to snarl at her, instead meeting her gaze with a bland smile. The Doctor squeezed her hand again, and she subsided. The Architect raised her eyebrows, but did not respond.

"Yeah, more to the point," the Doctor said, diverting attention from their battle of wills, "I've got a missing planet." He paused. "Well, four, actually, but one that I'm particularly fond of."

"Then you're not as wise as the stories would say," the Architect retorted, and Rose swallowed the outburst at the tip of her tongue. "The picture is far bigger than you imagine," the albino woman continued. "The whole universe is in outrage, Doctor: twenty-four worlds have been taken from the sky." Her voice took on a scolding note as the Doctor, very uncharacteristically, didn't react, or in fact move at all.

"And what exactly were you planning on doing about it?" Rose snapped, furious at the slights to the Doctor. The Architect rounded on her, but she wasn't finished. "Wait for some other impossible being to come along and complain to _them_ about how long it took?"

"How many?" The Doctor's voice was barely above a murmur and yet it cut through Rose's diatribe like he hadn't heard her. Rose could tell the news had completely thrown him. He hadn't been expecting a revelation of this magnitude. "Which ones? Show me," he ordered, quickly recovering his aplomb, dropping her hand to run over and join the Architect at her computer.

She watched as he chose to vault over a settee in his way rather than go around it and nearly grinned at this tiny return to normalcy as she followed him more sedately. Donna stayed where she was, but Rose would not be separated from her Doctor, not even by a table, not even for a moment. The Doctor slipped his brainy specs onto his nose and his hands into his pockets, bending over to stare intently at the screen in front of him, and Rose could almost believe what she'd been pretending all along, that this was just another day, another puzzle to solve.

"Locations range far and wide, but all disappeared at the same moment, leaving no trace," the Architect summarised, a hint of emotion finally colouring her tone. The Doctor read out the names of the planets as they scrolled past.

"Callufrax Minor…" Rose suppressed a shudder at the memory of her last trip there and the Doctor's eyes cut sideways to meet hers briefly before going on. "Jahoo, Shallacatop, Woman Wept…" Rose, with a growing sense of dread, recognised them all as names of planets she'd visited with the Doctor. "Clom." The Doctor broke off, looking incredulous. "Clom's gone? Who'd want Clom?" The name conjured up one of their stranger adventures, and she recalled that Clom was the twin planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius, the homeworld of the Slitheen. She and the Doctor shared a look as the Architect smoothly spoke over his recitation.

"All different sizes. Some populated, some not. But all unconnected." _Well, except for the fact that we've visited all of them, aside from Clom,_ Rose thought, wondering if that could somehow be relevant. She was about to speak up, knowing any connection was a good connection, when Donna beat her to it. She might have quite uncharacteristically declined to join them at the desk but her voice was firm and clear.

"What about Pyrovillia?" All of them looked up at her, but the Architect spoke first.

"Who are the females?" she asked, condescension dripping from her tone as she didn't even deign to look at the Doctor. He frowned at her, but before he could speak, Donna spoke for herself.

"Donna, and Rose. We're human beings," she said fiercely. "Maybe not the stuff of legend but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you."

The Architect's mouth drew into a line. Rose chanced a glance at the Doctor and caught a smirk of pride cross his face before he schooled it into a neutral expression, waiting for Donna to continue, which she did with none of her usual aplomb, but quiet confidence that impressed Rose as much as it had the Doctor.

"So: Pyrovillia, the Adipose breeding planet, that Poosh place. Are they on that list of yours?"

"Pyrovillia is cold case." One of the rhinos spoke up suddenly, causing Donna to jump. "Not relevant."

"How do you mean, cold case?" she asked, a little breathless from her scare.

"The planet Pyrovillia cannot be part of this," the Architect said quickly, trying to take charge of the situation as she dismissed Donna and looked to the Doctor again, who showed by his raised eyebrow that he saw through her ruse. "It disappeared over two thousand years ago."

There was the slightest of pauses. Rose could almost hear the timer ticking down before the light bulb glowed exuberantly to life over the Doctor's head.

"That's it!" he exclaimed, and Rose grinned, while the Architect and Donna startled. "Planets are being taken out of time as well as space," the Doctor continued, momentarily blind to all except his native element, and he began fiddling with the scanner, seeming much better with a clear puzzle to work on.

"Let's put this into 3-D," he said, deftly manipulating the computer to throw up a holographic projection of the missing planets that hung in the room before them.

Rose found it very hard to stay focussed now that she felt she was permitted to find the Doctor's intense concentration sexy; between the specs and the tongue pressed to the back of his teeth and the way he rocked back on his heels as she could practically see his prodigious intellect whirring behind his eyes. She considered it a feat of superhuman proportions that she didn't take him right there on the desk. Her cheeks grew hot and she hoped that none of the other aliens in the room were telepathic.

"Now, if we add Pyrovillia," the Doctor continued, thankfully oblivious to her changed emotional state, "and Adipose III..." He typed with a flourish and two more planets blinked into existence. "And finally, the Lost Moon of Poosh!"

Rose couldn't help but smirk as his tongue caressed his beloved 'ooh' sounds, but the expression quickly dropped from her face as the planets began to reorganise themselves. Before they settled, the Doctor had already moved in front of the desk, observing their movement. She bit her lip as she watched him literally stride amongst the celestial bodies, his coat flaring dramatically behind him, wondering why the power inherent in the juxtaposition didn't make her feel small or insignificant, just incredibly aroused.

 _Get a grip on yourself, Rose Tyler,_ she thought fiercely, trying to curb her randy human hormones. _Maybe wait until_ after _you save the multiverse to jump his bones?_ She resigned herself to it with a suppressed sigh, even as she knew she didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

"What did you do?" the Architect demanded, finally evincing the shock and awe befitting the situation, but the Doctor was so enraptured he didn't even rise to the inherent accusation in the woman's words.

"Nothing." He'd never sounded so pleased about something he hadn't done. "The planets rearranged themselves into the optimum pattern." He looked around, sounding for all the world as though this were simply a field study. "Oh, look at that," he enthused, spinning to follow the trajectory of a smaller moon and Rose needed to touch him, to be by his side and share his wonder. The Doctor grabbed her hand eagerly and nodded to the projection at large as if to say, _so there._ "Twenty-seven planets in perfect balance."

Rose squeezed his fingers. This was their life, the foundation of their relationship, the vistas of the cosmos as their playground. She stayed by his side because she loved him, and would do, even if they'd gotten that house with carpets and a mortgage in the far distant, TARDIS-less future after Krop Tor. She'd told him so, and meant it. But it was also at his side that she could see the splendour of the universe that was his birthright and his gift, to her, and his companions, and she wouldn't trade it for anything.

"Come on, that is gorgeous," the Doctor entreated, and despite the urgency of their current situation, Rose had to agree.

She smiled up at the Doctor, and found him grinning back at her, the truth of her recent thoughts reflected in his eyes along with the light of the planets. And yet everyone, even the Doctor himself, had questioned her relentless drive to find him again. The man who not only lifted her to the stars, but thought her worthy of them. It was there, standing among the serenely rotating symphony of spheres, that Rose knew whatever hardships lay behind, whatever dangers lay ahead, she'd reclaimed this, reclaimed them, and she saw that same knowledge in his expression.

 _Better with two,_ she mouthed, and he beamed at her.

"Oi!" Donna interrupted their reverie. "Don't get all spaceman and… spacegirl," she said, gesticulating wildly as she amended her previous nickname for Rose. Rose could have hugged the other woman. "What does it _mean_?"

Right. Universe ending crisis. Missing planets. Stolen Earth. Not just an excuse for her to ogle the Doctor. Blimey, this was going to be difficult.

"All those worlds fit together like pieces of an engine," the Doctor explained quickly as they joined her. "It's like a powerhouse." The words were directed to the room at large. "What for?" he asked himself more quietly, on to the next problem.

"Who could design such a thing?" the Architect wondered aloud, and Rose wondered again why they'd come here. Aside from the Shadow Proclamation knowing about most (but not all) of the missing planets, the woman didn't seem to have any answers for them.

"Someone tried to move the Earth once before," the Doctor mused, as though the idea couldn't possibly be connected. "Long time ago." Dread crept into his tone and his eyes narrowed as he looked down at Rose. Memories swirled in his eyes and she could tell not all of them were old. "Can't be," he breathed, and Rose knew he'd got it, whatever it was. From the way he was looking at her, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

The words heralded a long, anxious time where the Doctor didn't seem to do much except argue with the Architect, and Rose and Donna endeavoured to stay out of their way. Rose joined the ginger woman on the glass staircase, keeping one eye on the Doctor as he meandered through the room, his movements no doubt appearing aimless to anyone who didn't know him.

Their disagreement seemed to stem from the Architect not willing to believe the conclusion the Doctor had reached, while the Doctor stubbornly avoided actually elaborating on said conclusion.

Tiring of the rising tension, Rose turned her attention to Donna, nudging her with her shoulder. "So you were brilliant."

Donna rubbed at her nose, avoiding eye contact. "Not me. I'm just a temp. Shorthand, filing, hundred words per minute. Fat lot of good that is now. I'm no use to anyone."

Rose frowned. She recognised the words Donna spoke, knew them as intimately as she knew the girl she'd been before she started travelling with the Doctor. But Donna had been living in the TARDIS for a while now, and usually that was enough to convince people that they were worth so much more than they ever imagined. She wondered why Donna didn't seem to be able to see it.

"I'm sorry, did you or did you not just hand the Doctor the key to the mystery?" she asked, not letting Donna shy away from the praise that was her due.

The other woman blinked, as though Rose had suddenly started speaking in tongues. "But that wasn't me," she argued. "I was just so scared, I wanted to find the Earth and so I said the first thing that popped into my head. The Doctor would've figured it out sooner or later, or that Architect woman."

Rose was shaking her head before Donna finished speaking.

"Sometimes, the Doctor needs help seeing what's right in front of him," she informed her. "Our first time together, he says he's looking for a transmitter. Big, round, metal, right in the middle of London, and there we are standing at Westminster. 'Must be completely invisible,' he says."

The corner of Donna's mouth turned up, and when Rose chuckled at the memory, she joined in a second later. "It took nearly a full minute of me staring at the Eye for him to get it," she giggled. At the computer terminal, the Doctor looked up, grinning at her for just a moment in a way that was reminiscent of the first Doctor she'd known, and she knew he was listening in. The two women laughed a bit harder at the punch line of Rose's story, then subsided.

"As for the Shadow Proclamation," Rose continued, lowering her voice slightly, "the Architect was sitting on how many missing planets? And she didn't even think the Doctor existed, so I'm not too sure what her plan was going to be. Not to mention, they'd never have uncovered the whole picture, not with them ignoring the other three missing planets. Nope, this is all you, Donna Noble. You're brilliant."

Finally a hint of a smile graced Donna's face. "You sound just like him."

Rose grinned. "That might be because - just on occasion, mind you - the Doctor knows what he's talking about." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor's eyebrow arch in umbrage at her words and she winked at him. Donna looked pensive, and Rose let the matter drop, hoping the woman had taken her words to heart but knowing not to push. She was about to get up and rejoin the Doctor, when another woman, who looked like a younger version of the Architect, approached them.

"You need sustenance," she said in a whispery tone. "Take the water, it purifies." She held out a soup-bowl shaped vessel in each hand, and Rose and Donna accepted the offering with thanks.

Rose hadn't realised until that moment how thirsty she was, and took a sip as the second albino turned to Donna. It was room temperature in the bowl, but hit the back of her throat like springwater on a sweltering day. Rose swore she could feel it circulating through her limbs. Her whole body felt lighter.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," the woman was saying to Donna.

"Yeah," she replied, sounding like she was holding back tears. "My whole planet's gone." The albino just nodded at her, turning to Rose.

"You… There is something of the Wolf about you."

Rose's bowl trembled on its platter, and she gripped it tighter to keep from dropping it. "What did you say?"

She couldn't raise her voice above a whisper. The exact same phrase the werewolf had used in Scotland. Every time she thought she'd seen the end of it, it kept popping up again. She hoped the Doctor hadn't heard. Bad Wolf terrified him because it put her in danger, but Rose knew better. She clung to the albino's words like a talisman in the hope that they meant she would be able to keep her Doctor safe.

"How brightly you burn," the woman continued, as though she hadn't heard Rose. "Just before the end. God save you." She pushed between them up the stairs and was gone before Rose could recover enough to grab her and demand an explanation.

"What was that all about, then?" Donna asked her, as Rose fought to contain her swirling emotions.

The Doctor ambled over before she could answer, and she quickly adopted a look of curiosity, praying he hadn't heard. If the Doctor got one whiff of Bad Wolf's involvement, he'd lose whatever objectivity he still possessed. Fortunately, it didn't seem like he had.

"Donna, come on, think," he said, rude in the way he always was when frustrated by a problem. "Earth. There must've been some sort of warning. Rose, you too. Was anything happening back in your day, like electrical storms, freak weather, patterns in the sky?"

"No, nothing like that," Rose answered, trying to think back. Her memories of her time in Pete's World were clouded by her single minded dedication to the cannon project; she hadn't been aware of much of anything outside the confines of Torchwood. "Aside from the stars going out, I think there was some talk about global warming, but…" She shrugged helplessly.

She'd given the Shadow Proclamation grief for being useless but what good had she been, up to now? Pete's World ran ahead in time; she'd been perfectly positioned to gather crucial information and she'd been too blinded by her need for the Doctor to see it. The Doctor nodded once, accepting her words, but she could see the disappointment he tried to hide.

"Donna?" he pressed.

"Well how should I know? I've been travelling with your skinny arse," she retorted, and Rose was relieved to hear some of her old spunk return to her voice. "But before that I'd been doing all kinds of research on strange stuff happening…" Donna paused. "Er, no. I don't think so, no."

The Doctor's face fell. "Oh, okay, never mind," he said quickly, dismissing them both.

Rose crossed her arms, arching her eyebrow. The Doctor was in full Distraction Mode, but that didn't mean he could get away with acting this way. She knew where Donna's continued lack of confidence came from now. The Doctor had been contributing to it - unintentionally, Rose was sure - and it was just another blasted reminder of how the Doctor had changed since she'd been away.

She opened her mouth to speak, but Donna wasn't finished. "Although, there were the bees disappearing."

Rose wanted to cheer for Donna. Even after being dismissed like that, and doubting herself the way she did, she was still trying.

"The bees disappearing." The Doctor repeated her words slowly, scornfully.

Rose smacked his arm where it still rested on the railing. " _Rude_!" she hissed.

Rude and not ginger was one thing, but she'd never known the Doctor to be so disdainful of proffered information, especially when requested. He looked down in surprise, rubbing the spot absently as Rose watched his brain shift back into gear.

"The bees disappearing," he said again, as though testing out the words. Rose waited. _3...2...1…_

"The bees disappearing!" the Doctor exclaimed, running back to the terminal. Rose smiled knowingly, though not without making a mental note to have a talk with him later.

"How is that significant?" The Architect had caught the change in the Doctor's tone.

"On Earth, we had these insects," Donna said, chasing after the Doctor this time as Rose followed more sedately. "Some people said it was pollution or mobile phone signals."

"Or," the Doctor answered, typing frantically, "they were going back home."

"Back home where?" Rose asked, her tone one of light curiosity, knowing that she was setting up something incredible.

"The planet Melissa Majoria," the Doctor replied promptly, and Donna gaped. Rose stifled the urge to laugh - she'd loved this part of travelling with the Doctor, when he threw out facts like that so carelessly. Donna's reaction did not disappoint.

"Are you saying _bees_ are _aliens_?"

"Don't be so daft," the Doctor said disparagingly, and Rose would have chastised him once again except that she knew he was playing it up for her benefit. Donna was just beginning to roll her eyes when the Doctor added, "Not all of them," completely deadpan, with a wink at Rose. She just shook her head. The Doctor turned his attention back to the screen, businesslike once again. "But if the migrant bees felt something coming, some sort of danger, and escaped?" A moment later he let out a crow of triumph, pointing at the Architect. "Tandocca!"

"The Tandocca Scale," the Architect mused wonderingly.

"Oh, so this you know about," Rose grumbled under her breath, and the Doctor shot her an amused look. He launched into an explanation without being further prompted.

"The Tandocca Scale is the series of wavelengths used as carrier signals by migrant bees. Infinitely small. No wonder we didn't see it," he said, gob approaching hyper speed until even Rose had to work to keep up. "It's like looking for a speck of cinnamon in the Sahara, but look, there it is! The Tandocca trail. The transmat that moved the planets was using the same wavelength, we can follow the path!"

He held out his hand to Rose, eyes alight, but she ignored the hand in favour of catching him up in an exuberant hug, culminating in a hard peck to his lips that he returned after a moment of hesitation.

"Quite right," he murmured in her ear, and Rose shook her head inwardly. Daft alien. He'd clearly had the same thought: no need to hold themselves back any more.

The exchange lasted less than a second and then they were running back to the TARDIS.

"And find the Earth?" Donna concluded, half a step behind. "Well, stop cuddling and do it!"

"I am!" the Doctor exclaimed, hardly breaking stride as he pushed the TARDIS door open, pulling Rose behind him as they ran hand in hand to the console. Donna joined them as the Doctor slammed down multiple buttons.

"Gotcha!" Rose exclaimed, watching the screen intently. The Doctor raked a hand through his hair as he analysed the readings before laughing exuberantly in triumph.

"We're a bit late," he said, but didn't sound too displeased about it. "The signal's scattered, but it's a start!" He ran back to poke his head out the door. "I've got a blip!" he reported. "It's just a blip, but it's definitely a blip!"

"Then according to the strictures of the Shadow Proclamation, I will have to seize your transportation and your technology!" the Architect proclaimed.

"Not bloody likely," Rose muttered, and the TARDIS' lights flashed in agreement. Now Rose knew why the Doctor hadn't wanted to take them to the Shadow Proclamation in the first place. They wanted to steal the credit.

"Oh, really?" the Doctor asked lightly as Rose stepped to his side and slipped her hand into his. "What for?" His tone was politely inquisitive, though his grip on Rose's hand betrayed his tension.

"The planets were stolen with hostile intent," the Architect asserted. "We are declaring war, Doctor, right across the universe, and you will lead us into battle!"

A ringing silence fell at her pronouncement, or would have, were it not for Rose's scoff. Everyone turned to look at her.

"Oh, please," Rose said, finally letting the woman have it now that they were safe in the TARDIS, holding all the cards. "You had no idea what was happening until we showed up and solved it for you. And now, despite that, you've decided the best plan is to force a being that you didn't believe in an hour ago to go to war for you?"

The Architect looked scandalised.

"My name's Rose Tyler," she added, warming to her rant. "And I am every bit the stuff of legend, so if you think-" The Doctor stepped lightly on Rose's toes to halt her tirade, but he squeezed her hand appreciatively.

"Right," he said, sounding appropriately cowed. "Yes. 'Course I will." He nodded at the Architect and the platoon arrayed around her. Rose braced herself, knowing he was planning something. "I'll just go and… get you the key." His voice took on a subtly dangerous undertone.

He edged back into the TARDIS and slammed the door shut, but not before Rose got a glimpse of the Architect's expression, which was murderous. They ran to the console where Donna was waiting for them, the Doctor shrugging off his coat as he went. Grinning cheekily at the ladies on either side of him, he threw them into flight as the sounds of the Architect screaming impotently after them faded.

"Blimey, and those people were able to create a universal code of law?" Rose asked, once their laughter had subsided.

"Well, that was a long time ago," the Doctor said, adjusting dials on the console as he watched the viewscreen. "Pretty much runs itself now, it's no wonder the organization's a mite out of touch." He sniffed, stepping back from the console slightly, seemingly assured that they were on the right track. "Honestly I'd've preferred not to involve them at all but it was the fastest way to get a grasp on the situation. Otherwise I might have been running scans for days and the Tandocca Scale would've dissipated." He kicked back in the jumpseat, looking very pleased with himself. Rose settled on the edge, nodding at Donna.

"I think someone deserves an apology," she said pointedly, as both their heads swiveled to look at her.

"What for?" Donna asked first, confirming Rose's suspicion that this was a regular occurrence. The Doctor looked just as bewildered as Rose continued to stare at him.

"I thought Donna was brilliant back there, aren't you going to thank her?" she asked, and comprehension flashed in the Doctor's eyes.

"Oh! Yes!" He swiveled to face the other woman, who didn't seem to know what was happening. "Donna, you were brilliant. As always. I couldn't have done it without you and I'm sorry, I was rude. I… I haven't had anyone to call me on it for a while now." He hesitated before offering the final words, and Donna's face softened while Rose leaned into the Doctor's side at his admission.

"You really were brilliant, Donna," she said again. "If we find the Earth, it'll be because of you."

That finally coaxed a smile out of her, and she nodded almost imperceptibly. "So long as we find the Earth, it doesn't matter," she said, but her smile didn't fade.


	4. Old Friends, Older Enemies

The Doctor jumped to his feet and began fiddling with the console, making sure they were on the right track. Rose let him go, knowing he felt better while in motion. Truth be told, she did as well, but Donna was already pacing and she didn't feel the need to add to the tension in the room. She sidled up to the Doctor as the minutes stretched and wrapped an arm around his waist. He leaned into her embrace automatically and she planted a kiss on his cheek.

"'M headed to the galley, want a cuppa?" she murmured. Any other day she would have just gone but but she wasn't about to vanish on the Doctor now no matter how distracted he seemed. The Doctor hummed his appreciation.

"I'd love one, ta," he said, twisting absentmindedly to brush his lips across hers. She pulled back before she got too carried away: this new, romantic Doctor was intoxicating and Rose had never been more upset at an adventure interrupting the time she should have had to indulge in it.

"Donna, tea?" she asked gently, concerned for her new friend.

"What?" Donna snapped, then subsided, an apology on her face. "Oh. No, I'm fine. Thanks."

Rose nodded, accepting her answer, but shot the Doctor a significant look as she left the console room.

It was still a challenge for her to be out of sight of the Doctor for any length of time - and she suspected it would be for a while - so Rose didn't dally in her preparations and returned to the console room with record-setting speed (helped along by the TARDIS, who had kindly pre-boiled the water for her). Even so, the Doctor looked up instantly at her approach, relief flashing through his eyes, and Rose made sure to let their hands touch when she passed his mug over.

"Anything?" she asked lightly, leaning back against the console.

"We'll get there when we get there," he said in the same tone, clinking their mugs together before taking a sip.

But the longer they flew, the more antsy the Doctor became, and by the time Rose had brought their cups to the galley and returned (again, just to give herself something to do), he was tugging on his hair and Donna was fit to be tied. Just as she was about to forcibly drag Donna out of the console room to try and get her to relax in front of some mindless galactic cable, because it was obvious that the two of them were feeding off each others' anxiety, the time rotor stopped.

The silence grew for a few moments as Rose tried to process what was happening. They'd stopped, but there'd been no exclamation of triumph from the Doctor, no frantic movement as he manipulated coordinates. Instead, there was just the faint sound of shifting metal, like an engine panting as it cooled.

"We've stopped." He looked down at the viewscreen, surprised as the two women, and pulled his hands slowly away from the controls as though he'd been burned.

"What d'you mean?" Donna asked quickly. "Is that good or bad?"

"Doctor, where are we?" Rose chimed in. She didn't like the look on the Doctor's face.

"The Medusa Cascade," he said, in a voice laden with memory, his eyes fixed on the screen. "I came here when I was just a kid, ninety years old," he reminisced, and Rose looked up at him in surprise at the thought of him as a child. She never really forgot that the Doctor was much, much older than her, but he rarely referenced it in such an overt way. On top of that, to hear that ninety was considered childhood for him (although given that he was nine hundred she supposed that made sense) threw into sharp relief everything she didn't know about the man she'd been kissing all day, and she was once again seized by the desire to find out more about his life on Gallifrey and what other Time Lords were like. She wondered if she'd get answers now, what with their new intimacy. She hoped they'd get the chance.

"It was the centre of a rift in time and space," the Doctor continued, his lecture tone sounding somewhat forced given that no one had actually asked him to elaborate, for once. Rose wanted to ask what it was now, noting the past tense, but Donna had more important things on her mind.

"So, where are the twenty-seven planets?"

"Nowhere." The Doctor backed slowly away from the console until the back of his head hit one of the coral struts with a thud. Rose was frozen in disbelief. She'd never seen the Doctor so desolate, even when the TARDIS was lost. "The Tandocca trail stops dead." He swallowed audibly, Adam's apple bobbing. "End of the line."

Donna shook her head, denying his words. "So what do we do?" She had a half-smile on her face, like the Doctor was playing a joke on her and she wanted to maintain plausible deniability. She looked back at the screen, at the Cascade blazoned across it, and, when no answer was forthcoming, the half-hearted attempt dropped from her expression. "Doctor, what do we do?" She enunciated each word separately, as if there was a chance the Doctor might not have heard. He continued to stare at nothing, eyes old and tired.

"Now, don't do this to me," Donna begged, her voice starting to shake. "No, don't. Don't do this. Not now."

Rose knew how she felt. Ever since the Earth had disappeared they'd been riding cresting waves of hope and despair and it seemed inconceivable that they'd gone through all of it only to end up here, like this. "Tell me, what are we going to do?" the ginger woman demanded. The Doctor still wouldn't look at her.

"Donna…" Rose tried quietly. It was too similar to how he'd been when she'd first arrived in this universe. She didn't want to know what would happen if they pushed him too far. But Donna had reached her limit as well.

"You never give up!" she exclaimed. "Please!" When the Doctor still didn't respond, she clapped both hands over her mouth, stifling a sob.

Rose couldn't take it anymore and went to the Doctor's side, body screaming with the need to comfort him. Donna was right, he never gave up, but the Shadow Proclamation had been their last hope. For all their talk about being the stuff of legends, they'd learned, since Krop Tor, that some things truly were impossible. Dimensional walls, for example. Rose had forced her way through by combination of luck and sheer force of will; the reverse hadn't been possible from the Doctor's side.

Rose tucked her head into the crook of the Doctor's shoulder and his arms went around her automatically, but other than that he didn't move, didn't even look at her, his heartsbeat erratic against her ear. She thought about the dimension cannon, useless now as there was no chance she would ever return to Pete's World, but wondering if there wasn't some way they could use a similar concept to lock onto the Earth.

"Doctor?" Even her hushed voice sounded loud in the sullen silence and they all jumped. "When I was using the cannon, sometimes I'd get time right and space wrong. Or space right and time wrong. You said this place was a rift in time and space, yeah? The planets are already some _where_ else. What if they're some _when_ else, too?"

He was finally looking at her, and Rose was relieved to see some of the bleakness fall from his eyes, but his refrain of "Brilliant as always, Rose Tyler," was subdued as he pressed the ghost of a kiss to the top of her head. "Course, that's even less to go on than a speck of cinnamon in the Sahara. It's a hell of a job, even for the TARDIS."

"Well stop talking and get on with it, then, Spaceman," Donna said, the words lacking all of their usual bite. They all knew how much of a long shot it was.

The Doctor gave Rose a final squeeze and stepped away from her, preparing to do just that, when a shrill ring shattered the silence and they all jumped again.

"Phone!" the Doctor exclaimed, at the same time as Donna shouted, "Doctor, phone!" He fumbled with the mobile for a moment before finally getting it to his ear.

"Martha, is that you?" Rose supposed she was the only possible option. The hope in his voice would have been heartbreaking if she weren't so glad to hear it. He paused for a moment, listening. "It's a signal."

"Can we follow it?" Donna asked, but the Doctor was already donning his stethoscope. Rose gripped the console, anticipating a bumpy ride.

"Oh," the Doctor breathed, and Rose couldn't keep a grin from crossing her face at his tone. "Just watch me." He slammed the mobile and the bell to the console and grinned manically at both women.

The seconds ticked by. Rose held her breath while the Doctor flailed wildly. "Got it!" he yelled triumphantly, and Rose cheered. "Locking on!" He threw the TARDIS into flight accompanied by a larger than usual jolt and they all nearly fell over. The Doctor clung to the console, riding the bucking TARDIS like a fractious colt as sparks, which then became flames, began to shoot from the panels.

"Rose?" The Doctor's eyes were wild as they sought hers through the smoke. As much as she wanted to be by his side, she had a more important charge. Seizing her chance, she jumped away from the console to grab hold of the perimeter railing. Later, they would have a talk about how moments like this were going to go down. Right now, her job was to keep herself safe so the Doctor could focus.

"'M fine, Doctor, I'm over here!" she called, and the Doctor nodded, or perhaps that was just the TARDIS quaking.

"We're travelling through time," he announced, over the sound of more explosions. "One second in the future. You were right, Rose! The phone call's pulling us through!"

Rose and Donna both shrieked as the TARDIS swooped wildly, and began to shake so badly they nearly lost their grip. The shaking intensified, until Rose was having trouble holding on, getting flashbacks of white walls and relentless suction. She fixed her eyes on the Doctor, bouncing around the controls like a whirlwind. She was here, in the TARDIS. She was safe.

"Ready?" the Doctor shouted, and checked to see where Rose was again.

Rose would have replied _for what?_ but didn't get the chance.

The Doctor began counting down. "Three, two, ONE!" The last word became a scream as Rose felt her stomach drop away from her, like they'd just crested the first hill of a roller coaster. She screamed alongside the Doctor, as did Donna on the other side, until suddenly the shaking stopped. Rose overbalanced, and the Doctor was at her side in an instant, steadying her.

"All right?" he asked, his eyes deep pools of concern, and she clung to him a little tighter, erasing the memory of their separation.

"I'm fine," she assured him, as he tucked her head into his chest. "Blimey, I think that's the roughest flight I've ever taken," she said breathlessly as they moved together to examine the viewscreen. "It didn't even shake that much when we fell into the parallel world." Half a second too late, she realised what she'd said and swore under her breath. The Doctor's grip around her spasmed, but he otherwise didn't react.

"The twenty-seven planets," Donna said in wonder, oblivious to what had passed between them. "And there's the Earth!" She pointed excitedly to a planet in the centre of the screen on which the outline of Africa was clearly visible. "But why couldn't we see them?"

"The entire Medusa Cascade has been put a second out of sync with the rest of the universe," the Doctor answered excitedly, back into full lecture mode. "Perfect hiding place. Tiny little pocket of time, but we found them." His beaming smile expressed the relief they all felt, and Rose felt glad to have her Doctor back. The situation had been dire, but he'd scared her most of all.

Suddenly, the screen flickered, static spreading across it, and the Doctor jumped into action, working the controls despite the scent of smoke lingering in the air. "Ooh, what's that? Hold on… Some sort of subwave network."

The screen resolved itself into four quarters, with their faces on the top left, with Sarah Jane below them, an unfamiliar woman in the quarter beside her, and _Jack_! Jack's face was beside theirs, Jack who was laughing an instant before he saw them and the mirth dropped away.

"Where the hell have you been?" he demanded of the Doctor, and then his mouth dropped open in shock as he caught sight of her. " _Rose?"_

"Oh my God," she breathed, as the Doctor's grip tightened again, this time remaining tense. "What-? Why-? I mean, how...?" She couldn't decide which question to ask first, and the beautiful woman on the bottom right spoke over her.

"So that's Rose?" She sounded a little as though the wind had been knocked out of her, like she'd just discovered the existence of angels, or Father Christmas. "Oh, my God. You found her."

The Doctor clasped their hands together. "She found me," he replied, pride and joy and _love_ shining in his voice. The woman grinned, but it was somehow a sad expression. Jack shook his head as if to clear it.

"Doctor, it's the Daleks," he said bluntly, at the same time as Sarah Jane said "It's the Daleks. They're taking people to their spaceship."

Rose trembled, remembering the last time she'd seen Daleks, on the day they'd ripped her away from the Doctor. The Doctor flinched subtly at the words, but not in surprise, and Rose knew he'd put it together back at the Shadow Proclamation and hadn't told her. She frowned inwardly, despite her sudden anxiety - it seemed there were a lot of things they'd need to talk about, once this was over. She had to think of it like that, couldn't dwell on the possibilities when the Daleks were involved.

"The Earth has surrendered," Jack continued, but his eyes were still on Rose.

Everyone continued talking over each other as the Doctor just watched, face alight with the pleasure of seeing all his friends together in one place.

"Sarah Jane!" he exclaimed. The older woman she'd established a tentative friendship with four years prior was beaming out at them from the bottom left. "Who's that boy?" he asked, referring to the teenager standing behind her. "That must be Torchwood," he continued, without waiting for a reply. "Oh, they're brilliant." He squeezed Rose into his side briefly, not noticing the way she'd stiffened at the mention of Torchwood. "Look at you all, all you clever people."

"That's Martha!" Donna supplied, and Rose remembered what the Doctor had told her about his former companion. She certainly looked like a capable woman: intimidating, if Rose was being honest, in her all-black kit. "And who's he?" Donna pointed at the image of Jack with obvious enthusiasm.

"Captain Jack," the Doctor answered, with a warning. "Don't. Just don't." Donna didn't look put off in the slightest, and it was all so familiar Rose wanted to cry, except that the Doctor's use of the title had sounded genuine; he clearly wasn't surprised to see their friend.

"Since when does Jack work for Torchwood? In Donna's time?" Her questions were sharp, demanding. "What the hell is going on, I thought he was in the future, rebuilding the Earth?"

"It's a long story, Rose," the Doctor said, as Jack said the same.

Seeing Rose's frown, the Doctor stroked his thumb over her cheek and said in a lower tone, "We met back up again, during the Year That Never Was."

"I chased you down, you mean," Jack interjected, watching the two of them interact with undisguised interest. The Doctor ignored him.

"And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I lied, I'm sorry there's no time for me to explain why and how and everything else right now." His eyes, as they met hers, were so very earnest, and Rose knew she could believe him. "I thought we'd have more time," he said in a much quieter voice, Rose was unsure she'd been meant to hear.

She nodded once, accepting his answer, and the Doctor looked relieved as Jack spoke again.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised you didn't tell her." He sounded genuinely hurt underneath the brash exterior, and Rose knew that tone all too well from when he was saying goodbye. She inhaled a sharp breath. "I just thought, the way we'd left it after the _Valiant_ , things might've changed."

The Doctor started to speak, but Rose interrupted in his defense. "You can't blame him for that one, Jack, I've barely been back twenty-four hours. But we've found you now, yeah? We're coming for ya."

Jack grinned, opening his mouth to reply, and at that instant the screen cut to static. The Doctor and Rose made identical sounds of dismay, the Doctor releasing Rose to scramble for the controls.

"We've lost them!" Donna exclaimed, but the Doctor disagreed, tuning the console like a television aerial.

"No, there's another signal coming through," the Doctor said. "There's someone else out there."

Rose wondered who it could be, as everyone who'd travelled in the TARDIS recently had been on the screen. _Except for Mickey._ She started, unsure why his name had popped into her head just then, as the Doctor pounded on top of the viewscreen.

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

She wasn't really expecting to hear Mickey's voice on the other end, but it was still a shock when the voice that did come through was harsh and grating, dripping with malice. And the Doctor went still as a stone.

" _Your voice is different, and yet its arrogance is unchanged."_

Sarah Jane's voice came through even if they couldn't see the live feed, sounding just as shocked as the Doctor looked. "No. But he's dead."

" _Welcome to my new empire, Doctor,"_ said the voice, which was revealed to belong to a corpse of a man wearing a strange metal headdress, his eyes empty, weeping sockets but with a blue third eye poking out of his forehead. Rose had seen a lot of the universe. But she had never seen anything so grotesquely horrifying.

" _It is only fitting that you should bear witness to the resurrection and the triumph of Davros, lord and creator of the Dalek race."_

The creator of the Daleks! Rose was hit by a wash of understanding and revulsion, and knew why the Doctor had reacted the way he had. It was obvious that the two had some history together, so Rose wasn't quite sure why the thing had announced his role - perhaps it was for the benefit of the humans listening in. Davros struck her as an arrogant sod.

"Doctor?" Donna breathed.

The Doctor was _trembling,_ Rose realised, trembling and staring with wide, vacant eyes, and if she didn't know any better, she'd have said he was going into shock. She wanted to comfort him but didn't dare, not with the connection to Davros still open. She placed her hand over his where it gripped the console, but the Doctor's posture and expression didn't change in the slightest.

" _Have you nothing to say?"_ Davros taunted, and Rose was properly frightened now, when the Doctor didn't immediately launch into a rambling babble.

"Doctor, it's all right," Donna said tentatively, and Rose was grateful to think of her taking care of the Doctor when she wasn't there. "We're in the TARDIS," she stated, with a hitch in her voice betraying how frightened she, herself, was. "We're safe."

The Doctor certainly looked like he needed to hear those words. But they were necessary for the two women as well, even if it did sound like she was trying to convince herself. Rose squeezed the hand she held, punctuating the reassurance. When the Doctor finally spoke, it was in a choked monotone.

"But you were destroyed. In the very first year of the Time War, at the Gates of Elysium. I saw your command ship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child."

Rose stared. She'd never heard the Doctor talk so openly about the events of the War, and now she could understand why. She didn't know the meaning behind the names, but the two simple sentences hinted at such a wealth of horrific experiences that Rose cringed at the thought of her Doctor anywhere near it. Yet she knew that he'd fought on the front lines, been the one to end it, and had emerged as her gruff, leather-wearing Doctor, ready to blow himself up on a shop roof to save the Earth from living plastic.

"I tried to save you," the Doctor continued, in a small voice.

Rose hated to see him like this, hated having to restrain the comfort she was so desperate to provide him in the face of such malice. Of course he had tried to save the creator of the Daleks. That was the Doctor, even in the midst of the most terrible war the universe had ever known; his hand was outstretched to friend and enemy alike.

" _But it took one stronger than you."_ Davros rejoined. " _Dalek Caan himself."_

By the way the name jolted through the Doctor it was familiar, and it tugged at Rose's memories too, greyed out images of a room with a sphere that didn't exist and four Daleks.

"The Cult of Skaro?" she breathed, and the Doctor nodded almost imperceptibly.

Rose wanted to tell the Doctor to take the TARDIS and run. The Daleks reappearing to threaten the universe - again - was bad enough. But the idea of the ones behind it all being the very same Daleks who had so very nearly succeeded in separating them forever… It was very nearly too much for Rose. She'd worked so hard, day and night, for three years, trying to find her way back to the Doctor. And now, not even a day later, they were back fighting the ones that had made it happen. It simply wasn't fair.

" _I flew into the wild and fire,"_ the Dalek was saying, sounding beyond insane. " _I danced and died a thousand times."_

" _His emergency temporal shift took him back into the Time War itself,"_ Davros explained, almost as gleefully as the crazed Dalek behind him.

The Doctor was fit to snap, muscles taut and quivering beneath her hand. Her brain immediately supplied a half dozen crackpot theories as to how Dalek Caan had survived, but she soon realised it didn't matter as much as how they were going to stop them this time.

"But that's impossible," the Doctor spat, as though warding the words away from him. "The entire War is timelocked."

" _And yet he succeeded,"_ Davros said calmly, and Rose had to agree with him at least this once - _how_ it happened didn't matter. " _Oh, it cost him his mind, but imagine. A single, simple Dalek succeeded where Emperors and Time Lords have failed. A testament, don't you think, to my remarkable creations?"_

"And you made a new race of Daleks," the Doctor forced out, in a strangled tone.

Rose shared his horror and despair. Not even the Doctor's actions to end the Time War, nor Bad Wolf nor their joint sacrifice at Canary Wharf had been enough to eradicate the Daleks from the universe. Each time, they'd nearly taken the Doctor away from her. It seemed they would never be free of them, constantly waiting in some part for some lone survivor to reappear and take away everything they held dear. Rose clenched her hand around the Doctor's so hard her knuckles turned white.

" _I gave myself to them, quite literally,"_ Davros said, opening the fastenings of his jacket to reveal a skeletal torso, organs visible and throbbing beneath, and Rose fought the urge to be sick. " _Each one grown from a cell of my own body."_ He began to fasten himself up again, for which Rose was grateful. " _New Daleks. True Daleks."_ He cocked his head and looked challengingly up at the Doctor - an impressive feat for someone who didn't actually have a face. " _I have my children, Doctor,"_ he taunted. " _What do you have, now?"_

That was when Rose knew. It would be their TARDIS family against his, a whole new race of Daleks. And she could only pray they might all make it out alive.

"After all this time," the Doctor whispered, "everything we saw, everything we lost-" and that one word contained lifetimes of bereavement - "I have only one thing to say to you: _bye!"_

And on that word, injected with all the false levity the Doctor could muster, they were away. Away from the terror on the viewscreen - but Rose knew their respite couldn't last. She nestled herself into the Doctor's chest, but the gesture was for her sake now as much as his as they wrapped their arms tightly around each other.

" _No, no, no, no, no."_ The Doctor kept up a frantic string of denials under his breath as he stroked her back and arms, too fast to soothe. "I can't do this again, won't lose you, can't lose you, _Rose…"_

She halted his panicked recitations with a quick kiss. "Doctor, breathe," she said, as he stared down at her, wild-eyed. "I'm scared, too, yeah? I lost you, and I don't ever wanna go through that again. But the safest place in the universe is right next to you - no, listen," she pleaded, as the Doctor started to protest.

"Because I know you'll always do everything in your power to keep me safe. And I'd do the same for you, and that's why we're the best team in the universe. And I'll tell you something else, Doctor. Even if we do lose each other again," she forged ahead even as they both flinched, "I will always, always, find my way back to you. I promised you forever, Doctor. And I meant it."

She kissed him again, a bit harder, pulling back much sooner than she wanted to, mindful of Donna's watchful presence. She favoured him with a bright grin that was mostly genuine.

"Don't think you won't be getting an earful over Jack, once all this is over," she told him pertly. "Nothing's gonna stop me from giving you hell over that, no matter what. Okay?"

She watched his eyes as her words settled in. Travelling with the Doctor gave one a keen sense of when to be pragmatic and when to be outrageously optimistic, and this time was both.

The Doctor swallowed hard, and nodded. "Yeah. I'm counting on it," he said, tracing a thumb over her cheek. Rose gave him a final squeeze, and then they both turned to Donna, who was watching them with a faint smile.

"She's good for you, you know," she told the Doctor, who rubbed the back of his neck and smiled down at her.

"Don't I know it," he said quietly, and Rose felt hot blood rush to her cheeks.

Somehow, it seemed like an even more intimate admission. The Doctor took a deep, steadying breath, as Rose and Donna put a bolstering hand on each of his arms.

"Right!" he said, regaining a shadow of his former enthusiasm. "Let's touch down on the planet our friends so graciously found for us and see if we can't get our bearings, eh?" They both nodded, so with a manic grin and an "Allons-y!" he threw them back into flight.

And if he wrapped his arm a bit tighter around Rose under the guise of keeping his balance, well, she certainly wasn't about to complain.

When they stepped (with some trepidation, at least on Rose's part) out of the TARDIS onto the gloomy street, the Doctor's hand sought hers immediately. Rose clasped it with gratitude, feeling the rightness and safety she always associated with having her fingers wound through the Doctor's settle over her. She looked to Donna a little guiltily, hoping her new friend didn't feel like too much of a third wheel, but if the other woman minded, she gave no indication, crossing her arms to ward off the slight chill and looking about her.

"It's like a ghost town," she observed, and Rose had to admit, she felt a bit of a chill herself that had nothing to do with the temperature, looking down the ranks of abandoned cars and overturned prams and bikes in the misty darkness.

"Sarah Jane said they were taking the people," the Doctor mused. "What for?"

"Yeah," Rose agreed, struggling to keep her voice level. "I mean, Daleks exterminate people, they don't keep them hanging about on their spaceships."

"The last time I saw them, they were using humans for slaves," the Doctor continued in the same tone, oblivious to Rose's look of surprise. "But it was just the four of them then. They don't need slaves now, not with a whole new Dalek race up there. So why?"

Rose tugged him to a stop. "What d'you mean, last time?" she asked, worry making her voice sharp. The Doctor winced, at the memory or at her tone, she couldn't tell.

"With Martha," he explained quickly. "The Cult of Skaro escaped Canary Wharf and I found them trying to make a race of human-dalek hybrids in 1930s New York. We've got a lot to catch up on, Rose."

She nodded once in acknowledgement, trying to swallow her fear at the images his summary had conjured up while chalking up another piece of evidence for her theory that the Daleks were the roaches of the universe.

"Well, we're not going to find anything here," Donna said.

"Let's get back to the TARDIS," the Doctor agreed. "It's not safe out here. I'll see if I can tune back into the subwave -"

There came a call from behind them. "Rosie!"

She whirled, her hand slipping unnoticed from the Doctor's as her eyes lighted on a familiar broad-shouldered, great-coated silhouette, outlined in the glare of a streetlamp further down the road.

"Jack!" she cried.

Almost before she knew what was happening, she was running, trusting the Doctor to be behind her as she raced towards the reunion with the man she had once considered her best friend. She'd been so sure she'd never see him again, even her burgeoning relationship with her new Doctor hadn't quite been enough to distract her from the hole he'd left. Maybe she'd finally get answers to all the burning questions she'd held since the Game Station. She pushed her legs to go faster still.

She didn't see the Dalek emerge from a side street, but she heard its cry of "EXTERMINATE!"

Rose skidded to a halt, her boots grasping for purchase on the slick asphalt as she prepared to duck or dodge while knowing there wasn't time to do either.

" _ROSE!"_

Rose wanted to cringe when she heard the Doctor's voice crack as he bellowed her name, much further behind her than she'd realised. Regret lanced through her _\- I promised -_ but almost before the Dalek finished its hated refrain, there was a great explosion, and Rose cracked open one eye to see the Dalek's domed head blown off and smoking. She turned to see Jack reloading his weapon, which was all she was able to take in before being treated to a face full of frantic Time Lord.

The Doctor barrelled into her at full speed, almost knocking her over. His arms were around her before she could fall, peppering her face and head with kisses as she struggled to remain standing under his assault.

"Rose, oh, Rose," he repeated, over and over, refusing to be calmed even as she rubbed soothing circles on his back, whispering apologies and reassurances as her heart rate returned to normal after her near brush with death.

"I'm sorry, Doctor, I'm sorry, I'm alright, I'm here, I'm fine. See? Look, I'm fine, I'm right here." Gradually, she became aware of a presence at her back and she knew Jack had joined them.

"I believe this was my dance," he said, and Rose discovered that there was a wealth of difference between merely remembering that almost every word out of Jack Harkness' mouth sounded like a bedroom proposition and the actual experience of it. She'd need time to become acclimatised again.

"Go away, Jack," the Doctor muttered peevishly, his voice muffled by Rose's hair.

To Rose's surprise, he relinquished his grip on her when she started to pull away, and she spun around to lock her arms around Jack's neck. She shrieked and giggled as she was lifted into the air and spun around, burying her face in his shoulder. The Doctor's scent was her favourite in the universe, but she'd forgotten how Jack always smelled so _good_.

"We've gotta stop meeting like this," he told her, in the same tone with which he'd proposed business on top of an invisible Chula warship in the middle of the London Blitz.

"Yeah, well take it up with the designated driver," Rose teased, amazed at how similarly natural her voice sounded. Jack chuckled, but the Doctor was uncharacteristically silent, and Rose dreaded the looming confrontation.

"I _missed_ you," she told Jack, once her feet were back on the ground, and was surprised to find tears in his eyes when she looked up at him.

"Oh, I missed you too, Rosie," he said sincerely, "but it's not safe here, let's get back to the TARDIS." The Doctor was already reaching for her before Jack finished, stopping just short of dragging her away up the street.

"Good to see you too, Doc," Jack quipped as he hoisted his gun, but the Doctor still said nothing as they hurried back to where Donna had remained standing by the TARDIS.

"Come on, in, in, in," the Doctor urged, relaxing only when he shut the door behind him.

He stood there for a moment, just staring at Rose, who had made it to the top of the ramp before realising he wasn't behind her. She shrugged off her jacket and threw it onto the jumpseat, finding it too hot, too constrictive against her skin, which was buzzing like she'd touched a live wire. Then she looked back at him, trying to decipher the emotions darkening his eyes.

Behind her, Donna cleared her throat. "I'm Donna. Donna Noble."

"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack replied immediately with his usual flair, and when the Doctor didn't immediately take him to task for it, Rose knew something had to be done. She walked slowly down the ramp to the Doctor, feeling the eyes of the TARDIS' other occupants, but the Doctor's most of all. His gaze burned into her, heavy and raw, more alien than she'd ever seen it.

"Doctor?" Her voice came out more tentatively than she intended as she approached him, under the weight of that gaze. "I'm okay, see?"

She went to put her hand on his cheek before changing her mind halfway there and resting it on his upper arm instead. If she was being honest, the Doctor's expression was freaking her out a little bit. There was a beat, maybe a whole thirty seconds, in which the Doctor failed to react in any way and it seemed the entire TARDIS held its breath.

"I nearly lost you," the Doctor said at last, his voice sounding like the inside of a grave.

"But you didn't," Rose reminded him gently. "I'm still right here."

Finally, the Doctor pulled her into his arms, but it was too rough, too tight, not at all like their first embrace when she'd returned to this universe, his fear constricting them both. "If Jack had been a second slower…"

"But he wasn't," Rose rejoined, voice slightly strained.

"I'd just said I couldn't lose you." The Doctor's voice was becoming more heated as he spoke. "I'd just said it wasn't safe. And then you went running off!"

His words stung, but Rose tried to keep in mind that they were coming from a place of fear rather than anger. He'd done the same thing at Canary Wharf when she'd come back after he'd tried to send her away. It wasn't something she wanted to let him get away with, but that was made more difficult by her feeling like she partially deserved it this time.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she said quietly, under the sound of Donna and Jack talking in low voices behind them, starting to get to know each other. "I thought you were right behind me, I swear. But that Dalek was going to be there no matter what, it could've just as easily been you or Jack." She certainly wasn't going to let herself take all the blame for what had happened. It was a situation that they often encountered in their crazy lives, just a bit too close for comfort, this time.

"It was just like in my nightmares," the Doctor murmured, sounding at first as though he hadn't heard her, his voice regaining its haunted quality. "The ones where you're in danger and I'm too far away to save you. I was going to have to watch you die right in front of me and I just _couldn't…"_

His hands clenched into fists at her waist, pulling her impossibly closer. "There was nothing I could do. I couldn't move any faster. I was too far away, I couldn't do anything. Again."

Rose could hear the desolation in his voice, could feel his remembered sensations of impotence, of failure, as if they were her own. She'd felt them herself, after Canary Wharf. But this time… There'd been no time. The Dalek had her in its sights. He couldn't possibly have been planning what she thought he was suggesting.

"Doctor? Doctor, you're hurting me." She squirmed a little in the vise of his arms, and immediately he relinquished his death grip on her. She stepped back slightly to look him in the eye.

"Doctor." She made an effort to keep her voice steady. "You were gonna take the shot for me, weren't you? Give your life for mine. Again."

He sniffed, looking down at her as though he thought her impossibly daft. "Of course I was. I've got them to spare. You haven't. We went through all this, that Christmas."

"Yeah! We did!" Rose burst out. "And that's _exactly_ why-" She cut herself off with a sharp shake of her head.

The Doctor was still staring at her like she'd grown a second head (which, she reminded herself, he'd presented as an option for regeneration). Rose decided to try a different tack. "Doctor, what body were you in when you met me?"

He seemed thrown by her unexpected question. "My ninth," he replied promptly, before immediately looking like he wished he could take back the words. "Probably," he amended, but Rose left that aside for the time being.

Her eyes narrowed. "And when we met, you were nine hundred years old, you said?"

The Doctor was now watching her warily, as though he couldn't fathom where she was going with this. _Good._

"Yes." He drew out the word the same way he did when he said ' _Well,'_ but there was no certainty in it.

"So that's, what, a hundred years per regeneration?" Her voice was light, pleasant, even, as she sprung her trap. The Doctor gulped, finally following her logic when it was too late to stop what was happening.

"Well, it's not so cut-and-dried as that, of course!" The words tumbled over each other as he tried to talk his way out of the conclusion she'd drawn. "My age is more of a guess, as you know. I was in my first body for much longer than that, obviously, and some bodies lasted longer than others - as is the way of things, I'll have you know, even on Gallifrey-" Rose stopped his lips with a finger.

"And how long were you in your last body?" she asked. "A year? Two, maybe?" She kept talking over his sound of disagreement, unwilling to be put off. "Can't have been long. That's why you said you'd never told me about regeneration, because you'd just done it and didn't think you'd be doing it again for a while."

He nodded reluctantly, unable to argue with his own words.

"And you've been in this body for three years? Four? Is there a limit on these things or can you afford to just keep giving them out like candy?"

He looked startled at her tone, which proved Rose's point. She grasped his lapels, making sure she had his attention, symbolically keeping him in place.

"Doctor, have you been trying to throw away your regenerations since you met me?" She didn't try to hide the pain and hurt in her voice. The Doctor's eyes widened. He was spared having to answer, however, when the TARDIS abruptly went dark and silent.

The Doctor pushed past Rose and raced to the console, where Jack was already in place. He did a quick circuit, flipping levers as he went. Nothing worked.

"They've got us!"

He looked up at Rose as she approached and his eyes were wild and manic again. It was a harsh reminder that despite her near-death experience and their confrontation, they weren't out of this yet. Not by a long shot. Jack and Donna were on the other side of the console, watching the Time Lord carefully. Their discussion hadn't been all that subtle.

"Power's gone," he reported, toggling a few more switches for emphasis. "Some kind of chronon loop!"

The last words were a shout as the whole TARDIS tilted sideways. The Doctor grabbed Rose to keep her steady, everything they'd left unsaid burning in his eyes. Rose could only hope they'd get the chance.


	5. Something of the Wolf

The TARDIS' occupants looked at each other across the console. The Doctor wouldn't meet anyone's eyes and Donna was watching him with equal amounts of concern and exasperation. Rose and Jack, however, only had eyes for each other. The former Time Agent stood, hands behind his back, like he was giving a report.

"There's a massive Dalek ship at the centre of the planets. They're calling it the Crucible. Guess that's our destination." He kept his voice light, like it was simply a question of where to go next on a pleasure cruise.

But Rose knew better, and bit her lip, looking away from Jack to glance at the Doctor, who made a non-committal sound. Jack's eyes were full of understanding as he opened his arms to her, and that was the kind of invitation she could never refuse.

"Jack," she said, rushing into his arms, feeling his solid presence ward away her fears and uncertainties.

The Doctor was home, but Jack was comfortable. Constant. She'd missed him enough that she'd gone running pell-mell down a Dalek infested street to get to him. Not even their imminent arrival on the Crucible could keep her from getting answers as to why that had to be.

"Jack," she began, and watched as something heavy settled in his eyes. "What the hell happened to you?"

The man let out a long sigh, twisting so that only one of his arms was around her as he leaned back against the railing.

"I died, Rosie," he said, before the Doctor could speak. "The Daleks cornered me. I went down fighting. Then I woke up."

Rose blinked, mouth agape, too shocked to be sad. "What? You mean, you got knocked out or something, yeah? How d'you mean, you _died_? The Doctor said you were staying in the future, rebuilding the Earth!"

Jack levelled a glare at the Doctor, who stood with his hands in his pockets, not even pretending to fiddle with the controls any more. In the dim emergency lighting, his face looked shadowed and old.

"Sounds like someone's got some explaining to do." Jack shook his head in wonderment. "You sly bastard. You really did get away without telling her anything."

The Doctor glowered at Jack, but he came around to lean back against the console, taking both of Rose's hands in his. "You're not wrong," he said at last, and Rose met his eyes, which were set in an expression which was earnest and sad. "I shouldn't have kept this from you, Rose," he said simply. "I was just so _scared_. When I took the Vortex out of you, it erased the most salient memories, but I was never sure of what would trigger it, how much might awaken it. So I avoided the subject altogether."

"Which also had the convenient benefit of hiding your guilty conscience," Jack interjected, tone deceptively mild. The Doctor just inclined his head, not even attempting to argue the point. Rose's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Doctor, what else did I do when I came back to you?" she asked slowly, already feeling like she knew the answer. "Besides defeating the Daleks?"

"You brought him back, Rose," the Doctor said gently.

 _I bring life_. The words echoed in Rose's head, apropos of nothing.

"You could manipulate all of time, and space, and matter, and you brought him back to life. Only, you couldn't control it."

Jack made a sound of displeasure. "I wasn't gonna tell her about that part, Doc."

The Doctor shook his head. "It's not my preference either, but Rose deserves to know the truth. And it's part of the reason I left you behind."

Rose's emotions, which had been somewhat ameliorated by the first half of the Doctor's statement, were blown out of the water again by the second half. " _We left him behind_?"

The Doctor winced at her tone. "I ran away," he amended. "I was regenerating, and Jack was…" He sighed, tried again, as Rose watched incredulously. "Rose, you didn't just bring him back. You made him a fact. A fixed point, a living fixed point, in time and space. It wreaks havoc with my time senses, even now. Back then, it was just too much."

"You could have come back, afterwards," Jack observed.

"Well, given that the TARDIS threw herself to the end of the universe the last time you tried to get on board, perhaps it's better I didn't, eh?" The Doctor's voice was sharp.

Jack shrugged.

"She's not complaining now, is she?"

The Doctor nearly rolled his eyes. "Her power's gone."

"Hang on," Rose said suddenly, and both men looked at her again. "What does that mean, a 'living fixed point'? What did I do to Jack?"

"I've explained to you what a fixed point is," the Doctor began, mostly for Jack's benefit. "As a Time Lord, I'm able to sense which points in time are fixed and which are in flux. Fixed points grate against my time senses; it's like having a constantly blaring mauve alert in your head. Enough to give you a headache. Now me, I've been around the block a few times, I can handle fixed points. But a _living_ fixed point is something I've never had to deal with - something no time-sensitive species has ever had to deal with. Being around Jack is different. It's worse. It's the headache plus that prickle at the back of your neck, the cold slippery feeling in the pit of your stomach that there's something wrong. I know how you humans get when that happens, because I can feel it now, too."

"Oh, come on," Jack scoffed. The Doctor arched an eyebrow.

"It's true, look." He rolled up his sleeve.

"Goosebumps?" Donna asked. She'd been quiet for so long even she looked surprised to hear her voice.

"Time Lords don't get goosebumps," the Doctor told her, rolling down his sleeve again. "At least, not for the reasons you lot do. This is a direct result of the presence of that man there," he drawled, indicating Jack.

"You left out the best part, Doc," Jack said, his voice falsely chipper as he ignored the Doctor's warning glance. "He means I can't die," he told Rose, who looked at him wide-eyed. "That's what me being a fixed point means. I'm immortal. When I realised I was stuck in the year two hundred one hundred, I used my vortex manipulator to go back and find the Doctor, but I ended up in 1869 instead. I had to live through the whole of the twentieth century, the long way, because it had burnt itself out. That's how I started working for Torchwood - working to change it." He smiled. "And that's it, that's the whole story."

Rose looked between Jack and the Doctor, tears in her eyes. She suspected that it wasn't the whole story, not by a long shot, but she was intimately familiar with the look on Jack's face and knew not to push, instead focussing on what she felt was the most important issue.

"Can I undo it?" she asked, unsure of where there question was directed. They shook their heads in unison.

"I took the power out of you," the Doctor said. "It's completely gone. Otherwise you would have burned."

Rose's tears started to flow as she looked at Jack again. "I'm sorry, Jack" she said, for everything she knew her friend was keeping from her. He pulled her into a tight embrace.

"It's not your fault, Rosie," he said roughly. "It's not ever your fault, don't you blame yourself for a second. You wanted the universe to always have me in it. And why wouldn't you?" He waggled his eyebrows, drawing a watery chuckle from her.

And at that moment, the scanner beeped.

The Doctor stiffened, whirling to run back to the viewscreen. One glance was enough to confirm what the rest of them had already guessed. The Doctor looked at each of them in turn, his eyes lingering on Rose.

"The Dalek Crucible," he said darkly. "All aboard."

* * *

The TARDIS shook slightly as it touched down. The Doctor focussed on regulating his breathing, still feeling the adrenaline from almost losing Rose coursing through his veins. This was why, this was _exactly_ why, he'd never acted on the feelings he'd known perfectly well were mutual. All it had taken was for him to finish his sentence, those five little words in the med bay, and this was the universe's response: to throw them into battle with Davros and a whole new race of Matrix-forsaken Daleks.

And then to have Rose nearly taken from him right before his eyes? It was almost worse than Canary Wharf. At least then he'd known that Rose was safe, if lost forever. But to watch her die…

He clenched his fists, willing those thoughts away into the realm of his nightmares, to be dealt with after they were done here. Because there _would be_ an after. They hadn't gone through all they had for him to lose Rose only a day after he'd gotten her back. The universe was capricious, yes. He'd never known it to be cruel.

"DOCTOR." The deeper tones of a commanding Dalek reverberated through the TARDIS. "YOU WILL STEP FORTH OR DIE."

He swallowed hard. This was it.

"We'll have to go out," he said, facing the doors because if he looked at any of them he'd lose his nerve. "Because if we don't, they'll get in." He was amazed at how natural and level his voice sounded, giving no indication of how he wanted to grab Rose and hide away with her in the bowels of the TARDIS, to scream defiance at the universe until it came to pry her from his cold, dead hands…

Then he had to look, because Rose was speaking.

"You told me nothing could get through those doors," she said, and she was so brave, as always, his Rose, the tremour in her voice audible only if one knew what to listen for.

"You've got extrapolator shielding," Jack said quickly, and the fear was there too, just beneath the surface, and the Doctor ached for his friends.

"Last time we fought the Daleks, they were scavengers and hybrids, and mad," he explained, and as much as the words hurt it was almost good to share his fear; he couldn't have wished for better company, here at the end. "But this is a fully-fledged Dalek empire, at the height of its power." Words he'd hoped never to say again, as images flashed through his mind, inevitable as the tides, of the last time he'd fought the Daleks like this, and he willed his companions to understand. "Experts at fighting TARDISes, they can do anything."

He'd watched it happen, had seen in excruciating detail everything they were capable of, over and over again, too many times to count. And now they had managed to capture the last TARDIS in the universe. His voice sounded hollow to his own ears.

"Right now, that wooden door is just wood." He looked at Donna as he spoke. Jack and Rose had faced Daleks before, but his best friend had no idea what was in store. She'd been brilliant at the Shadow Proclamation, but between Rose and Jack she'd been very uncharacteristically quiet and he knew that was a bad sign.

As the two of them began to argue about Rose using her dimension hopper to escape - the Doctor could have told Jack not to bother - he turned his attention to his neglected companion.

"Donna?" She startled as he addressed her directly and he put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "Donna, I'm sorry. There's nothing else we can do."

She nodded easily. "No, I know." Then she favoured him with a sad smile. "I'm sorry, too."

The Doctor frowned, perplexed. "What for?"

"I'm sorry you never got your time off with Rose," she said, and the discussion behind them quieted. He glanced over his shoulder, seeing nothing but understanding in his beloved's eyes.

"Yeah," he said roughly, pulling Donna into an embrace. She had truly been the best of mates; his conscience when he ignored his own, his strength when he'd felt so weak. "Thank you, for everything," he told her, knowing he didn't say it often enough. Had never said it often enough. She nodded, and he stepped back, pretending not to notice as she wiped her eyes.

Daleks, of course, were not known for their patience. "SURRENDER, DOCTOR, AND FACE YOUR DALEK MASTERS."

He suppressed the urge to scoff. _You wish_. But he knew it would be even more unwise to push them too far.

"Daleks!" Rose scoffed a laugh to cover her genuine fear, and the Doctor thought he'd never loved her more.

"Oh, God," Jack concurred, but he was laughing too.

They were such a pair. He truly missed the Team TARDIS days, and of course had only himself to blame, as was true of most things. _Focus, Doctor_ , he chastised himself. The only chance they had at all getting out of this alive was if he was on perfect form. He turned to face his companions, his friends.

"It's been good, though, hasn't it?" he asked, still selfishly needing that last bit of validation. He'd taken them from their lives only to bring them here. But there was not an ounce of regret in any of their expressions and he realized the truth of his words. It _had_ been good. "All of us. All of it. Everything we did."

He looked at Donna. "You were brilliant," he said sincerely. He turned to Jack. "And you were brilliant," he admitted, and the former con man smirked. He looked to Rose last.

"And you…" His voice failed him, seeing the same emotions burning in her eyes as he felt pounding through his hearts.

Then he remembered that he had another way to show Rose everything she meant to him and pulled her into his arms, crashing their lips together, trying to infuse his own with every last ounce of love he felt for her and knowing he'd at least partially succeeded when she plundered his mouth just as thoroughly. It was a moment of bliss, the sensations still new and overwhelming, that was halted only by Jack's appreciative whistle.

The Doctor pulled back reluctantly at the sound. "Blimey," he said, more breathless than he would have liked to admit, and Rose grinned at him. He captured the image of that expression in his eidetic memory, until the next time she could give it to him again. _I really hope that wasn't our last kiss_.

He led the way to the doors, Rose right behind him, where he planned to keep her as long as she'd let him. Just as he was about to go out, however, Rose hung back, and he turned to look at her, feeling a dreamy sense of peace settle over him.

"What are you doing, Rose?" he asked, each of his words reverberating back through the air.

"I just gotta…" She trailed off, her words having the same effect. "I forgot my jacket." She pushed past Jack and Donna, who looked after her bemusedly. The Doctor nodded, accepting her answer, and stepped out of the TARDIS without a second thought.

"DALEKS REIGN SUPREME. ALL HAIL THE DALEKS." The chorus greeted him as he swept the scene with wide, calculating eyes, seeking any possible advantage.

Jack and Donna joined him, and he swallowed the panic crawling up his insides at the sight of the endless Dalek phalanxes, serving as a harsh reminder that despite his new face, despite all he'd seen and done with Rose and Martha and Donna, it hadn't truly been that long - just a blink of time, comparatively - that he'd been removed from the Time War. Centuries of horrific memories he'd only just managed to lock away came crashing down on him again, and like the proverbial Atlas, he struggled to lift them.

"BEHOLD, DOCTOR." The Doctor was now able to put a face - well, body - to the voice that had commanded them earlier as a large red Dalek taunted him. "BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF THE TRUE DALEK RACE."

The Doctor might have told him that it was hardly necessary. But he was more concerned about his missing third heart.

"Rose?" he called back, fighting to keep the concern from his voice. No need to give the Daleks more ammunition than they already had. What was she up to?

Even as he wondered that, the TARDIS door slammed shut. With Rose still inside.

As though the sound were a death knell to his hearts, the Doctor was snapped out of the trance he'd been in since Rose had gone back for her jacket and his fear spiked. He would never have set foot out of the TARDIS without Rose by his side; some outside influence had to have been affecting them both. The only question was _what_?

The Doctor only realised he'd spoken the word aloud when Rose called from the TARDIS and he knew the spell had broken for her as well.

"Doctor? What happened? Why'm I still in the TARDIS?" He whirled to grasp the door handle, but it wouldn't budge.

"Rose? Just get out of there," he shouted, forcing down his growing terror. He'd sworn to himself he'd never let them be separated again and now some mysterious force had caused him to leave her behind.

"Oi!" Rose's voice called again, much closer, and he could tell she was likewise struggling with the door. "Oi, I'm not staying behind! We've got to stay together!" Her distress proved to him that it hadn't been her idea, and he confronted the red Dalek.

"What did you do?"

"THIS IS NOT OF DALEK ORIGIN," he was informed, so he tried the door again, both pushing and pulling, with Rose doing the same on the other side, to no effect.

"Doctor!" she called, and her voice pulled at his hearts. "Doctor, the door won't open! What's going on?"

He sent a mental plea to the TARDIS, begging for help, but for once didn't receive any kind of response. That alone was terrifying enough, but the idea of any impassable surface separating him from Rose - again - drove the Doctor wild. He rounded on the large Dalek.

"Stop it!" He tried to sound commanding instead of merely scared. "She's my friend." And even that felt like too much of an admission in front of a legion of Daleks. "Now open the door and let her out!"

The red Dalek was emotionless and unmovable. "THIS IS TIME LORD TREACHERY."

The Doctor's hearts were pounding hard enough to make him tremble, and he prayed the Daleks wouldn't notice. If they were blaming him for this then he would lose whatever time he needed to figure out what was really going on. Objectively, it was much more likely that the Time Lord would have a way to control the doors of his TARDIS, and he had no way to convince them otherwise.

"Me?" he argued, advancing on the Supreme Dalek, knowing all along that it was probably pointless, but he could think of nothing to do but stall for time. "The door just closed on its own!"

"NEVERTHELESS." The Dalek was predictably remorseless. "THE TARDIS IS A WEAPON AND IT WILL BE DESTROYED."

The Doctor spun back again as a trapdoor opened beneath the TARDIS with a clang of metal and his ship plummeted below, but not as fast as his hearts plummeted in his chest. He raced to the opening, but it closed as soon as he got there, preventing him from throwing himself after his ship.

"What are you doing?" he cried, knowing all of his emotions were showing in his voice and powerless to stop it as he was to protect Rose. "Bring it back!" _Bring her back. Please. Bring her back!_

He ran to stand before the Dalek, would have prostrated himself before it if he thought it would do any good.

"What have you done?" He knew he sounded frantic and he couldn't have cared less. "Where's it going?" He clamped down hard on the thought that Rose and the TARDIS were already lost to him, but it pushed through anyway.

"THE CRUCIBLE HAS A HEART OF Z-NEUTRINO ENERGY," the Dalek informed him mercilessly - of course, one of the only substances in the universe capable of unmaking a TARDIS. "THE TARDIS WILL BE DEPOSITED INTO THE CORE."

"You can't," the Doctor heard himself shout, and he wasn't sure if he was still speaking to the Supreme Dalek or to the universe, once again poised to snatch Rose away. "You've taken the defenses down!" Not that they would have lasted very long against a Z-neutrino core but it would have given Rose more time. "It'll be torn apart!" He sought refuge in anger because it was the only thing that could keep him going.

"But Rose is still in there!" Donna's protest behind him might as well have been wind, and Jack's frantic command of "Let her go!" was similarly ineffectual.

The Daleks had what they wanted now. And the Doctor had nothing, not even the beginnings of a plan. He'd failed Rose. She'd crossed universes to get back to him and he hadn't even been able to keep her safe for a whole twenty-four hours.

"THE FEMALE AND THE TARDIS WILL PERISH TOGETHER," the red Dalek preened. "OBSERVE."

The Doctor didn't know if he could bear to watch. He didn't know if he could stand not knowing. In the end, his body obeyed of its own volition, and he stared in horror, unable to tear his eyes away from the image of the TARDIS bobbing amidst the flames. Rose was going to burn to death and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The Dalek smugly echoed his thoughts. "THE LAST CHILD OF GALLIFREY IS POWERLESS."

This had to be a dream. This was a horrible nightmare that had come on him because he'd been sleeping for too long and he would wake to find Rose beside him. He refused to accept any other alternative. Except perhaps one.

Clinging to the image of how Rose would give him hell over this if she knew, he turned his back on the agonies of the box that had been his home for the past millennia and offered the Daleks the only thing he had left to give.

"Please. I'm begging you, I'll do anything!" He knew he sounded pathetic, begging from the Daleks, again; knew that it was likely having the opposite effect, showing how much he was affected, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered if it meant Rose could survive.

He glanced back instinctively at the screen, making sure the TARDIS was still there as he made his plea. "Put me in her place."

He had no way of knowing if these Daleks remembered Rose's actions on the Game Station (the Abomination, they'd called her), but surely they would place more value on the Oncoming Storm?

"You can do anything to me, I don't care, just _get her out of there_!" His voice rose to match the way his hearts were screaming in his chest. _I'm sorry, Rose_ , he thought. _But I can't live in a reality where you don't exist._ He'd barely been able to live in a universe without her.

The red Dalek was clearly gloating, even through its monotone. "YOU ARE CONNECTED TO THE TARDIS," it said, ignoring the Doctor's last ditch attempt to salvage the situation. "NOW FEEL IT DIE."

He was, and he could, sharp breaths hissing in and out between his teeth as the pain mounted, but it was impossible to separate the death throes of the TARDIS from the thought of losing Rose.

A Dalek began a countdown. "TOTAL TARDIS DESTRUCTION IN TEN RELS. NINE, EIGHT."

Donna stepped forward to take his hand and he nearly jumped out of his skin, having forgotten she and Jack were there. He couldn't derive any comfort from the contact, but clung to it as his final connection to sanity.

"SEVEN, SIX, FIVE, FOUR."

The Doctor could hardly see past the pounding in his head that doubled with each passing second, the TARDIS' pain compounding his own. He was the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm; he'd ended the Time War and watched as two races burned, and he was stuck staring at a screen as the rest of what he held sacred in the universe went up in flames as well.

His helplessness wasn't nearly as galling as the fact that the universe had done exactly what he had feared it would do, if he'd given his words to Rose Tyler. But he'd done a hell of a lot for this ungrateful universe and now he was calling in everything he was owed. The entirety of his existence would be meaningless if he was reduced to standing by and watching, unable to save what mattered most to him. It was the closest to praying he'd ever come.

"THREE, TWO, ONE." The TARDIS vanished, and he waited for the yawning emptiness in his head as his very last telepathic connection was severed.

It never came.

* * *

When the TARDIS door closed behind Rose, she almost didn't notice at first. This was due to most of the space in her head being taken up by the same niggling feeling she got when she had a song stuck there but could only recall one or two lines with any clarity. It took a bit of time and a great deal of effort to place it as the same melody she'd heard while in the Zero Room with the Doctor.

The Doctor! He was calling to her, she now realised, which meant that he hadn't been the one to close the door. This made sense, since he'd just finished listing off the various reasons the TARDIS was no longer safe.

"Doctor?" she called back. "What happened? Why'm I still in the TARDIS?"

Even as she spoke, she remembered feeling an overwhelming urge to go back for her jacket, and the Doctor letting her go. That on its own was bizarre enough, but she also couldn't recall why she'd felt the need to take her jacket off in the first place. The whole thing had overtones of mind control and she didn't like it one bit.

"Rose, just get out of there!" The Doctor's voice was very close to the door, hardly muffled at all, and she could hear his anger and fear like a siren.

She wasn't leaving him. She couldn't. She tried the door, finding it firmly locked, and wondered what the TARDIS was up to. Images flashed through her mind of a similar situation: the Doctor in peril, surrounded by Daleks, and her trapped in the TARDIS. Sick fury swooped in her belly.

"Oi!" she cried, as much to the sentient timeship as to the Doctor. "Oi, I'm not staying behind! We've got to stay together!" That was how they were going to beat the odds, by not allowing themselves to be separated. This was just unfair. "Doctor, the door won't open! What's going on?"

Rose heard the Doctor shouting at the Daleks, but it was further away and she couldn't make out individual words, just his growing agitation. Having already given up on the doors as a bad job, she leaned her back against them and glared up at the ceiling.

"What d'you think you're playing at?" she muttered. "Your power's off. Why do you want to separate us anyway? I always got the impression you were on my side."

She hadn't really been expecting an answer, so it caught her off balance a bit when the song in her head increased in volume, as if in response. She still couldn't catch the thread of the melody; it was like listening to someone singing far away, the sound carried on the wind. Rose found herself straining to listen even though she doubted the music was physically present, there being nothing there to make it.

 _~Are you so sure of that, my Wolf?~_ The words, with their incongruous tone of light teasing, were so entwined with the music that Rose couldn't tell them apart. Almost before she could think to wonder who was speaking to her, the voice that was not a voice continued.

 _~I am you,~_ it said, a touch petulantly. _~I resent the implication that we~_ Rose could almost hear the shudder, and got a confused impression of frustration towards, of all things, English pronouns, _~are separate.~_

Rose wasn't sure what she would have responded, but just then the TARDIS gave a massive jolt, and she was forced to grab the railing to avoid falling flat on her face.

"Doctor?" she yelled, but knew instinctively that he was no longer able to hear her.

 _~Wrong again, my Wolf.~_ The voice sounded a touch impatient now – well, that made two of them, Rose thought.

Her stomach had dropped, indicating that they were falling. The enigma of the song forgotten in favour of survival, Rose clung to the railing with all her strength but still wasn't able to keep her feet. The fall continued for longer than even the most intense theme park ride, and Rose started to feel slightly ill.

 _~I thought it was time we had a chat,~_ the voice came again. Rose couldn't believe it.

" _Now?_ " she exclaimed, with a grunt of exertion.

 _~Oh, would before work better?~_ The pensive tone was so at odds with Rose's current situation she almost couldn't process it. _~Or was it after? No. There might not be an after.~_

"You're the TARDIS!" Rose realized suddenly. Either that, or she really was going round the bend. Maybe a bit of both. She caught a brief flash of preening satisfaction before the sickening sensation finally ended, with a bone-rattling crash as the roundels began to explode around her.

Flames leapt up again and Rose, coughing from the smoke, made her halting way to the console, though to do what, she had no idea. The TARDIS was still without power, and even if that wasn't the case she wouldn't have had the first notion of how to save the ship.

"A little help, maybe?" she suggested, grabbing the jacket that had started this whole mess and pulling it on to protect her from the glass shards, covering her mouth and nose with her sleeve to avoid breathing in the smoke as much as she could.

 _~I cannot help you,~_ the voice said, _~but you can help yourself.~_

"Chance'd be a fine thing," Rose groused, "but how?"

 _I am the Bad Wolf._ The words came from somewhere else as the music swelled to a crescendo in her head. _I create myself._

But she had no truck to open the console again, not that she was sure it would do any good this time, wherever they were. She felt a pulse of alarm that wasn't hers.

 _~You must not do that again, my Wolf!~_

Another roundel exploded and Rose was surprised by how little time had passed since the odd conversation began.

"What would you suggest?" she croaked. Tears were streaming from her eyes so she couldn't see, could barely think for the destruction going on around her. Bits of coral from the ceiling rained down on her back as she crouched beneath the relative protection provided by the console and jumpseat.

 _~Oh, all right, that's enough!~_

The world around her froze.

Rose blinked at the sudden silence. She let out a few more wracking coughs, trying to catch her breath. She could still move freely, but there were shards of glass frozen mid-flight and the flames were motionless, like the fake images behind gas fireplaces.

"What's going on?" Rose asked, feeling slightly silly to be talking to herself but also pleased that her voice was stronger.

 _~I have more to explain, and what is the point of being made of time if one cannot control it now and again?~_

Rose wiped her eyes, taking a few deep, experimental breaths. "So right now, I'm-?"

 _~Frozen.~_ The TARDIS sounded smug. _~Between one moment and the next.~_

"Okay. So what's the plan? Not like I can just stay frozen forever, yeah?"

 _~That is entirely up to you, my Wolf,~_ the TARDIS replied. _~I can return time to its normal flow and we will die, along with everything in every universe.~_

Rose made a face. "Not really much of a choice, is it? I'll take option two, yeah?"

She had the distinct impression of a coy smile. _~I rather thought you might. Option two is that you allow us to merge again. Become the Bad Wolf. Save us and my Thief.~_

It almost wasn't a consideration for Rose. Almost.

"So was it you who made me go back for my jacket?"

 _~Correct. A mild telepathic suggestion planted in the part of your mind that still retains its connection to me, and a matching one within the bond with my Thief.~_ Rose felt a brief flash of indignation at being manipulated, but the TARDIS was unrepentant.

 _~Had I not interfered, you and my Thief would have left together and I would have perished, and with me, any chance of saving reality.~_ Rose had to admit that as reasons went it was a fairly good one.

"So what about the Doctor?" she asked. "Last time he died to take the Vortex out of me. I mean, I know we don't have any other options, but…"

 _~Your guilt is misplaced,~_ the TARDIS said, _~and in this case, unwarranted. How very human of you.~_ A pulse of indulgent amusement swept over Rose, the way she sometimes felt when she watched the Doctor at his antics. _~You haven't been listening. A piece of me remains in you. It has remained dormant until this moment. My Thief could no more unmake us than he could have created us. You have always been the Bad Wolf. And you always will be.~_

The TARDIS' words nearly overcame Rose's remaining reluctance. "But you told me that I couldn't open your console again, didn't you?"

 _~I will never allow you to look into my Heart again, my Wolf. It would kill you in truth. One time was an unfortunate necessity to enable us to merge, and will not be repeated. Now that our bond has been reestablished, I will grant you access to the powers of a TARDIS. You will not be able to control matter as you could before.~_ The TARDIS' tone made it clear she believed her own abilities would be more than sufficient.

Hope burgeoned in Rose's heart. "So what are we waiting for? Let's save the Doctor!"

 _~It will be difficult,~_ the TARDIS warned. Rose was about to let her know what she thought of that, but the sentient timeship wasn't finished. ~ _My Thief will not be able to take the power out of you, because it is a part of who you are,~_ she explained. ~ _That does not mean it cannot kill you. You must relinquish the power once your task is complete, or else you will burn, and nothing will be able to stop it.~_

 _How can I let go of this?_ The words echoed in Rose's mind and she swallowed, finally grasping the magnitude of what she was about to attempt.

 _~It would not be as… intense, this time,~_ the TARDIS offered. Rose nodded. It would have to be enough.

"Will I ever get to do this again? Talk to you like this?" She felt a sudden rush of affection for the TARDIS.

~ _Never say never, my Wolf_ ,~ the timeship said, and she found herself enveloped by a similar, though much more potent, emotion. ~ _And so, until the last time: Hello.~_

In the present moment, Rose closed her eyes, and Bad Wolf opened them. She knew what she had to do.


	6. The Doctor's Soul

To the Doctor's enduring amazement, the pain in his head vanished as though it had never been, so abruptly that it took him a moment or two to adjust. His connection to the TARDIS hadn't broken - it was only dormant, like she was hiding herself from him for some reason. And if the TARDIS hadn't perished, then there was cause to hope that Rose hadn't either. He had no idea how or why, but grasped the thought like a drowning man clutching a raft.

"THE TARDIS HAS BEEN DESTROYED," the red Dalek intoned.

 _But it hasn't!_

"NOW TELL ME, DOCTOR: WHAT DO YOU FEEL?"

 _Since when would a Dalek care?_

"ANGER? SORROW? DESPAIR?"

The Doctor remembered he was supposed to be mourning the loss of the TARDIS right now. Whatever had happened, he knew better than to reveal that the Daleks' plan had failed until he understood what his ship had done.

"Yeah," he managed at last, knowing and not caring that he sounded more confused than upset.

"THEN IF EMOTIONS ARE SO IMPORTANT, SURELY WE HAVE ENHANCED YOU?"

The Doctor fought the urge to laugh incredulously. Sass from a Dalek?

But he'd forgotten that his companions were still present, and had no way of knowing that they hadn't just witnessed the destruction of Rose and the TARDIS.

"Yeah? Feel this!" Jack, voice rough with grief, produced a revolver from somewhere and fired on the red Dalek. Predictably, it had a negligible effect, but the Doctor could hardly blame him for seeking an outlet, being very nearly in the same position himself.

"EXTERMINATE," came the reply, and Jack flashed incandescent briefly before spreading his length on the floor of the Crucible.

The Doctor felt his time senses rebel as they were twisted around themselves, the way they always did when Jack came back to life, the universe retconning the last few moments to ensure his continued existence.

"Oh my God!" Donna exclaimed, running to kneel beside the man's prone form.

"Donna, come here," he said, as gently as he could. He needed to get her away from Jack before she recovered from her shock and remembered that this couldn't kill him. Jack had given them a chance, and he didn't want to waste it. "Leave him."

"They killed him!" Tearfully, Donna refused to leave his side. The Doctor tugged with more urgency, sympathetic to Donna's emotional state but unable to give her any more time.

"I know," he said soothingly. She might have just met the man but the situation was still horrific. "I'm sorry."

"ESCORT THEM TO THE VAULT," the red Dalek ordered. The Doctor managed to pull Donna away and stood, hoping she could tell how sorry he was to have put her in this position.

"There's nothing we can do," he murmured, trying to keep the balance between reassuring his best friend and selling their reaction. Donna allowed herself to be led away and the Doctor could have sighed in relief, even when the red Dalek intoned,

"THEY ARE THE PLAYTHINGS OF DAVROS, NOW."

His blood boiled at the thought of his companions in such danger. He hadn't been able to protect Rose ( _she's fine, she's fine, she_ has _to be fine_ ) and knew that he was equally powerless to protect Donna. Shielding her with his body as best he could, he looked back once to catch Jack's wink. He wished he could ask what his plan was, but he trusted the other man implicitly. Keeping his face impassive, he kept Donna close as they followed the Daleks to their fate.

The Doctor knew the exact moment Donna remembered their conversation in the TARDIS, because she stiffened, pulling away from his embrace slightly. She glanced up into his face once, but otherwise did not react except to squeeze his hand. He squeezed back, suppressing a grin. Brilliant, she was.

But soon they entered the Vault and were separated by the Daleks, forced to stand several feet away from each other. The Doctor didn't protest, knowing he couldn't protect Donna from so far away, but also that he didn't have a choice.

"Activate the holding cells." Two containment force fields came shooting down from the ceiling. The Doctor turned to look as Davros entered, flanked by yet more Daleks. His fists clenched involuntarily as he stared at the being he'd hoped never to see again.

"Excellent," the mad scientist gloated, wheeling himself closer. "Even when powerless, a Time Lord is best contained."

The Doctor wished he could back away but refused to give Davros the satisfaction of revealing his unease. He'd done enough of that during their first conversation, completely thrown by his appearance.

"Still scared of me, then?" Fortunately, acting nonchalant when his hearts were breaking was second nature to him, and he fell into the old routine without a second thought, reaching out instinctively to test the force field's limits. A pattern of geometric shapes rippled outwards from the spot where he touched it and he shook out his hand from the residual sting as he saw Donna doing the same out of the corner of his eye.

Davros ignored his taunt. "It is time we talked, Doctor. After so very long."

"No, no, no, no, no," he rejoined, before Davros finished his sentence. It felt good to finally let out some of his impotent frustration, even if it was just through banter. "We're not doing the nostalgia tour. I want to know what's happening right here, right now, because the Supreme Dalek said Vault, yeah? As in dungeon, cellar, prison." He rotated slowly on the spot to take in his surroundings until he was facing Davros once again.

"You're not in charge of the Daleks, are you? They've got you locked down here in the basement like, what? A servant? Slave? Court jester?" Once the words started coming, they wouldn't stop, and he didn't try, hoping he'd be able to draw any attention away from Donna, and maybe glean some pieces of information in the process.

"We have an arrangement," Davros replied, but with a pause in the middle that fooled no one. The Doctor was quick to pounce on his hesitation.

"No," he repeated again, "No, I've got the word. You're the Daleks' pet!" Unable to help himself, he wondered briefly if he'd pushed things too far as Davros turned on Donna, though his voice betrayed that the Doctor's barb had stung.

"So very full of fire, is he not? And to think, you spent so long searching, all that wasted effort after fool's errands, to find him again."

"Leave her alone," the Doctor snapped, fully aware of his inability to follow through on the demand. But the thought of Donna's effort and determination to find him, that had succeeded when so many others had failed, warmed his hearts with rueful joy even now. He hated to think of that indomitable spirit being used against her.

"She is mine to do as I please," Davros leered, and the Doctor clenched his fists at his tone.

"Oh yeah? You believe that, you've got another think coming, mate," Donna retorted, all attitude and bluster and everything he loved about her. The Doctor bit back a smile. Though he couldn't help but feel guilty at putting her in this situation in the first place, or fear that her mouth might get her into even more trouble, he also had to appreciate her bravery. Brilliant Donna.

"She's not part of any of this, Davros," the Doctor called after him, hoping to draw attention again. "This is just between you and me. Let her go!" He'd already failed to protect the people he cared about more times than he could count. He didn't really think it would work but he had to try.

"You must be here," Davros responded calmly. "It was foretold. Even the Supreme Dalek would not dare to contradict the prophecies of Dalek Caan."

Hearing the man he'd known as a brilliant scientist raving about prophecies almost distracted the Doctor from the equally mad words of the insane Dalek.

"So cold and dark. Fire is coming. The endless flames."

 _Great, really specific there, Caan,_ the Doctor thought, but he couldn't suppress a small shudder of unease. It was the gleeful tone that really got him. He thought of the sights he would never be able to shake, so long as he lived; the TARDIS and Rose amidst the flames of the core. The desolation and ashes of the Time War.

He pushed the memories away. He had to stay focused. Rose was alive. If he allowed himself to think otherwise he'd lose it completely, and he needed his wits about him now.

"What is that thing?" Donna asked, distaste and fear in her tone.

The Doctor explained, grateful for the distraction if not for the reminder of all the pain this single Dalek had caused him.

"It was a Dalek." His voice throbbed with anger and hatred that he couldn't suppress. "That's what they look like, inside their shells. It was part of a cult that was responsible for the battle of Canary Wharf." His jaw clenched around the hateful name until he almost couldn't speak.

"Four of them escaped the battle to end up in 1930s New York. I met them there, with Martha." And he'd begged them to kill him. It was an outcome he could very easily see repeating itself here, if something didn't give, and soon. "Three of them were killed, but Caan survived. It used an emergency temporal shift to escape again, but it flew into the Time War, unprotected." His tone reflected his continuing disbelief and disgust at that thought.

"Caan did more than that," Davros said, continuing the recitation. "He saw time. Its infinite complexity and majesty, raging through his mind." When Davros spoke so lovingly of time the Doctor felt vaguely dirty. "And he saw you. Both of you."

"This I have foreseen, in the wild and the wind." The Doctor still couldn't reconcile the stark raving mad thing with the Dalek who had committed genocide in Manhattan. "The Doctor will be here as witness, at the end of everything. The Doctor and his precious Children of Time. And one of them will burn."

Rage boiled through the Doctor. "Was it you, Caan?" he spat. Caan had been present at Canary Wharf, had learned what Rose had done on the Game Station. "Did you kill Rose?" _Rose is fine, she's fine._ "Why did the TARDIS door close? Tell me!"

The mad Dalek was the only other option he could think of, but he knew demanding answers from the thing was futile. His words were more about the act and drawing attention back to himself. In that much, at least, he was successful.

"Oh that's it." Davros almost cooed, the tone so incongruous with his rasping voice that the Doctor clenched his teeth. "The anger, the fire, the rage of a Time Lord who butchered millions. There he is." He sounded like a kid at Christmas.

The Doctor had to fight back the urge to laugh. If he _really_ thought they'd killed Rose, Davros wouldn't have cause to sound so smug. He wasn't even sure himself what that sort of knowledge would do to him, despite having been so close to finding out. All he knew was that the Daleks would learn just how accurate their moniker for him was, as he became the Oncoming Storm in truth.

"Why so shy?" Davros was saying, as the Doctor stared straight ahead, trying to force down his roiling emotions. "Show your companion. Show her your true self. Dalek Caan has promised me that, too."

He knew Donna was watching him, but he couldn't look at her. She'd seen him at his worst, under the Thames in fire and flood. It was not an experience he cared to repeat.

"I have seen," Caan chimed in. The Doctor wished he could get him to stop. Davros' taunts were one thing, he was used to those. But the madness of the creature's prophecies got under his skin effortlessly. "At the time of ending, the Doctor's soul will be revealed."

"What does that mean?" He couldn't stop the words. He feared what might be unleashed. If Rose was hurt…

"We will discover it together," Davros said, sounding for all the world like a professor before his class. "Our final journey. Because the ending approaches. The testing begins."

"Testing of what?" He'd forgotten, among thoughts of Rose and the TARDIS and prophecies that there were still twenty-seven planets out there. It seemed the Daleks' plan was finally being set in motion.

"The reality bomb," Davros answered promptly.

The Doctor couldn't parse the meaning of the words. He chanced a glance at Donna, and found her looking confused and scared. He wished he could say something to reassure her. For all Donna knew, the TARDIS was destroyed and Rose was dead. He wished he could reassure himself.

The Supreme Dalek's voice echoed through the Crucible. "TESTING CALIBRATION OF REALITY BOMB. FIRING IN TEN RELS."

"What does it mean?" Donna piped up; it wasn't like her to be quiet for long. "What are they testing? What are they going to do?"

The Doctor shook his head helplessly. They were about to find out, whether they wanted to or not.

"Behold," Davros exulted. "The apotheosis of my genius."

The Doctor's hearts clenched, his body wound tighter than a spring. Coming from the man who created the Daleks, the words were horrifying. A viewscreen similar to the one on which he'd watched the agonies of the TARDIS appeared showing a holding area filled with ordinary humans.

The Supreme Dalek's countdown continued. "ACTIVATE THE PLANETARY ALIGNMENT FIELD."

With that, the pieces clicked into place. The stars going out, the planets, the core of the Crucible… The Doctor's mind went numb with horror. "That's Z-neutrino energy, flattened by the alignment of the planets into a single string."

He'd effortlessly calculated the number of humans in the holding area - they were nothing compared to the implications of the technology the Daleks now possessed. "No, Davros." Even he couldn't be so mad. "Davros, you can't. You can't! No!"

The Doctor's entire body rebelled against what he was seeing as they were forced to watch the prisoners on screen atomise from the head downwards. It was a deceptively gentle process. It was enough to make the Doctor wish he could be sick like humans.

"TEST COMPLETED," said the Dalek on the screen, before it was shut off.

"What was that? Doctor, what happened?" Donna demanded.

The Doctor focussed on regulating his breathing with only marginal success, grateful for once to have attention focussed away from him. The cage he was held in suddenly seemed to be for his benefit, rather than the Daleks', as he wasn't at all sure he trusted himself with freedom right now.

"Electrical energy, Miss Noble." Davros was all too eager to explain. "Every atom in existence is bound by an electrical field. The Reality Bomb cancels it out. Structure falls apart."

A sudden memory assaulted the Doctor: Rose, standing haloed in the golden mists of Time. _You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence, and I divide them._

He blinked rapidly. Where the hell had that come from? He couldn't afford to be thinking about that right now. _Rose is fine. Rose is fine._

"That test was focussed on the prisoners alone." Davros was still gloating. "Full transmission will dissolve every form of matter."

"The stars going out." Donna's horror was a shadow of his own as she put the pieces together on her own.

"The twenty-seven planets," the Doctor bit out. "They become one vast transmitter, blasting that wavelength-"

"Across the entire universe," Davros finished, insufferably pleased. "Never stopping, never faltering, never fading." The Doctor could only stare at his old enemy, able to picture all too clearly what he was describing. "People and planets and stars will become dust, and the dust will become atoms, and the atoms will become nothing."

He paused gleefully over the last word. "And the wavelength will continue, breaking through the rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every dimension, every parallel, every single corner of creation." Davros' voice became madder with every word as the Doctor's mind reeled. "This is my ultimate victory, Doctor," Davros exclaimed. "The destruction of reality itself!"

"PREPARE FOR UNIVERSAL DETONATION." The Supreme Dalek's orders came down from above. "THE FLEET WILL GATHER AT THE CRUCIBLE. ALL DALEKS WILL RETURN TO SHELTER FROM THE CATACLYSM."

Some indomitable, besieged part of the Doctor's mind registered that it meant all the Daleks would be in one place, but that was only useful if he had even the inklings of a plan, which he did not.

"WE WILL BECOME THE ONLY LIFEFORMS IN EXISTENCE."

The Doctor barely heard. Long ago, he'd prevented potential calamity by sealing the rift in time and space at the heart of this very nebula. It had remained somewhat dear to him ever since. He never imagined he'd might one day be called upon to protect all of reality here as well.

The Doctor was accustomed to high stakes. Saving the Earth, saving the universe: for some reason, the life he led always seemed to throw those sorts of situations in his path. He did what needed to be done because he was the only one in a position to do so.

He had to admit that maybe this time he was not in that position. He might still have the sonic screwdriver, but even if he managed to escape he was confined in a vault, in the centre of the Dalek fleet, without the TARDIS. There was still Jack, hopefully escaped and somewhere on the Crucible, but he had no idea what the former time agent was planning to do and couldn't work it into his calculations.

His mind whirred constantly through the variables, always coming up with the same conclusion. He didn't want to look at Donna, afraid she might see the truth in his eyes. His thoughts kept returning to Rose. His bond with the TARDIS remained dormant. He needed reassurance that she was all right and wasn't being given it. If he was being honest with himself, he needed it even more than he needed a plan, and right now he had neither.

A familiar voice shook him out of his thoughts.

" _This message is for the Dalek Crucible. Repeat. Can you hear me?"_

Martha! He could have kissed her - but no, that's what had gotten him into that mess in the first place. She'd survived, and was still under orders from UNIT; he wondered what they had planned. Maybe he had more assets than he'd thought.

"Put me through!" He demanded of Davros.

"So it begins, as Dalek Caan foretold," Davros said, ignoring Martha's message altogether. At this point the Doctor couldn't have cared less what Dalek Caan had foretold.

"The Children of Time will gather," Caan exulted, "and one of them will burn."

"Stop saying that!" The Doctor snapped, having reached his limit. "Put me through!"

" _Doctor!"_ Martha exclaimed, and he turned to face her. " _I'm sorry, I had to."_

Oh, Martha. What had she done?

Before he could speak, Davros interjected.

"Oh, but the Doctor is powerless. My prisoner." His glee at that fact was evident as he inclined his head in a parody of politeness. "State your intent."

" _I've got the Osterhagen Key,"_ Martha said, holding up a large square. " _Leave this planet and its people alone, or I'll use it."_

"Osterhagen what?" The Doctor had to admit he was flummoxed. He'd worked with UNIT for ages and never heard of such a thing, though he'd been out of touch for some time. "What's an Osterhagen Key?" He hoped Martha would be able to drop enough hints about what it did to avoid giving her plan away to the Daleks.

Except, apparently, that was exactly her intention. " _There's a chain of twenty-five nuclear warheads placed in strategic points beneath the Earth's crust. If I use the key, they detonate, and the Earth gets ripped apart."_ To her credit, she sounded properly horrified by the idea. But the Doctor didn't care about that just now.

"What?" The Doctor couldn't believe what he was hearing. What had Martha become? "Who invented that?" A moment later he answered his own question. "Well, someone called Osterhagen, I suppose; Martha, are you insane?"

How had he missed this? He hadn't been in contact with UNIT for quite some time, it was true, and he'd been surprised by the militaristic leanings of the organisation when he visited them with Martha, but he'd never dreamed they'd go this far.

"The Osterhagen Key is to be used if the suffering of the human race is so great, so without hope, that this becomes the final option." Martha's voice was shaking, but resolute, and the Doctor's hearts broke for her. She'd already been through so much. He knew exactly how it felt to be called upon to make that kind of choice and wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy, much less someone he considered one of his closest friends.

"That's never an option," he said, because sometimes, it was, but he refused to watch a former companion - a friend - take it.

" _Don't argue with me, Doctor!"_ Martha's eyes met his through the viewscreen and he could tell she very much wanted him to argue with her, which was why she couldn't let him. He understood, all too well. " _Because it's more than that. Now, I reckon the Daleks need these twenty-seven planets for something. But what if it becomes twenty-six?"_

Now the reason for revealing herself to the Daleks became clear and the Doctor was torn between pride and despair. Pride, because Martha was brilliant and had figured out the Daleks' plan all on her own, and was still trying to give them a chance. Despair, because he knew the Daleks wouldn't take it, and he currently didn't have a better alternative plan. Even if he did, he had no way of stopping Martha from doing what she intended.

" _What happens then?"_ Martha asked rhetorically. " _Daleks? Would you risk it?"_

As plans went, it was nearly unconscionable, sacrificing the Earth to save all of reality. But when put like that, the choice became clear. The Doctor swore under his breath. There had to be a better way.

"Oh, you are good," Donna told Martha, and the other woman smiled tremulously.

"All right there, Donna?" she asked, striving for a normal tone.

"'Course I am, what else would I be?" The banter sounded much more natural on Donna's end. "Another day, another jail, another planet to save, what else is new?"

Martha nodded, keeping the Osterhagen Key in view. "You look after him, yeah?" She indicated the Doctor, then her brows drew together in a frown. "Where's Rose?"

Before any of them could answer, another screen opened up. Jack was holding something up, but the Doctor barely registered it, focussed on the people standing behind him. He'd hoped Sarah Jane - his brave Sarah Jane - would stay away even though he'd known better than to expect it. But there was another Smith standing next to her, which was a development the Doctor had _not_ expected.

" _Captain Jack Harkness, calling all Dalek boys and girls, are you receiving me?"_ The man's insouciant drawl was in full effect. " _Don't send in your goons or I'll set this thing off."_

"He's still alive," Donna said, almost to herself. "I mean, hearing about it is one thing but this is bonkers."

"And Mickey." The Doctor was still struggling to believe the evidence of his eyes, but he had more important things to worry about. "Captain, what are you doing?"

" _I've got a Warp Star wired into the mainframe,"_ Jack replied. " _I break this shell, the entire Crucible goes up."_

"You can't!" The Doctor protested. Admittedly, sacrificing the Crucible would be better than detonating the Earth, but it would leave the twenty-seven planets locked in the Medusa Cascade and the rest of the Dalek fleet to rampage across the universe. "Where did you get a Warp Star?" He was utterly bewildered and not accustomed to being so.

" _From me."_ Sarah stepped forward, still the same indomitable woman who'd travelled with him so long ago. " _We had no choice. We saw what happened to the prisoners."_

"Impossible." The Doctor had almost forgotten about Davros. "That face. After all these years."

" _Davros."_ Sarah Jane's voice quieted to a whisper, laden with memories from their time on Skaro. " _It's been quite a while. Sarah Jane Smith, remember?"_ Her voice grew stronger with every word, until she threw the last in his face.

"Oh, this is meant to be." Davros sounded nearly euphoric. "The circle of Time is closing. You were there on Skaro at the very beginning of my creation."

" _And I've learned how to fight since then,"_ Sarah boasted, and the Doctor looked down, guilt sweeping through him. Jack was one thing, but Martha and Sarah? Donna had said it, before they encountered the Sontarans. _Is that what you did to her? Turned her into a soldier?_ But Sarah had a son, she'd said, hadn't she? And yet she was still here, ready to sacrifice herself instead of staying at home with him. And Mickey - he'd had a life in the other universe and had jumped back only to end it here.

" _You let the Doctor go,"_ she continued, " _or this Warp Star, it gets opened."_

" _I'll do it,"_ Jack added. " _Don't imagine I wouldn't."_

Oh, but the Doctor knew he would. That was the problem.

"Now that's what I call a ransom!" Donna exclaimed. There was a pause. When the Doctor didn't respond, she looked over at him and must have seen the expression on his face. "Doctor?"

"And the prophecy unfolds," Davros said quietly.

"The Doctor's soul is revealed," Dalek Caan laughed. "See him! See the heart of him!"

Donna was still watching him carefully, but the Doctor couldn't bring himself to look at her.

"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun." Davros enunciated each word with obvious relish. "But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons."

On the screen, Martha suddenly looked away and the Doctor's soul ached, that she recognised the words as applying to her.

"Behold, your Children of Time transformed into murderers," Davros continued. The Doctor thought that descriptor was a bit much, considering what the Daleks were about to do, but then, he'd been unable to end them before they began so what did that make him?

"I made the Daleks, Doctor." The mad scientist rolled to face him. "You made this."

"They're trying to help." The Doctor's protest sounded feeble even to his own ears, but if he had a week, it wouldn't be enough time to get into all the reasons Davros' argument was flawed - not when he was fully aware that it concealed a kernel of truth.

Davros ignored him. "Already I have seen them sacrifice today, for their beloved Doctor." The Doctor fought the childish urge to cover his ears. If it was Rose… _Don't you dare, Davros. Don't you dare mention Rose._ "The Earth woman who fell opening the subwave network."

"Who was that?" The Doctor braced himself for the news. It never got easier. He hoped it never would.

" _Harriet Jones."_ It was Jack who answered, sounding uncharacteristically solemn.

" _She gave her life to get you here,"_ Martha added, and the Doctor's heart sank. Even after what he'd done to her, she still carried on, still fighting on behalf of the Earth. Now more than ever he regretted his impulsive actions that Christmas, when it was far, far too late.

"How many more?" Davros' tone was dangerously quiet. "Just think. How many have died in your name?"

But the Doctor didn't need to think. He saw their faces every time he closed his eyes: the hostess on Midnight. Jenny. Lee Rattigan. Astrid Peth. Chantho. The Face of Boe. The deluded, doomed members of LINDA. Angela Price. Sir Robert. Lynda with a Y. The Controller on the Game Station. Jabe. On and on and on, stretching back through the centuries. His victories never came without a cost. There was a reason he rarely slept.

Davros wasn't finished. "The Doctor. The man who keeps running, never looking back, because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself."

Incredulity broke through the Doctor's haze of grief. Did Davros truly think this was new information for him? That he lived in ignorance of just how many lives to which he owed his own? No matter that he'd never asked to be so indebted. He lived in constant fear of the day when he would add another name to the list. He never forgot. Really, if this exercise was to be revelatory to anyone it would be for his companions, who always gave him more credit than he deserved. It was time they learned the truth.

"Bit rich coming from the thing that wants to destroy reality, mate." Donna's voice piped up, quiet, but no less clear for all that, and the Doctor turned to look at her, seeing nothing but compassion beneath the fire in her eyes. He opened his mouth, but no words came, and Donna smiled - _smiled_ \- at him.

"ENOUGH." The Supreme Dalek's voice broke the moment. The Doctor had never thought he'd be so grateful to a Dalek. "ENGAGE DEFENSE ZERO FIVE."

Onscreen, Martha took a step back, still holding up the key. " _It's the Crucible or the Earth."_ But she dropped the key as the Daleks engaged the transmat. On the other screen, Jack and the Smiths also vanished, dropping the Warp Star. They all appeared in a heap on the floor in front of him, and the Doctor breathed a sigh of relief that they were no longer holding the destructive items even as he realised that left them once again without a plan.

Jack moved forward and caught Martha, who had come out in a roll. "I've got you, it's all right."

The others came running up and the Doctor's hearts seized with panic. "Don't move, all of you!" he shouted, throwing out his hands instinctively, mindless of the forcefield. "Stay still!" They'd at least been safe, where they were, but now they were here everyone was in even greater danger and he still wasn't in a position to protect them.

"Guard them," Davros ordered. "On your knees, all of you. Surrender!"

There was a very tense moment as the four of them were clearly seeking avenues to make use of their current freedom, but the Doctor knew there was nothing they could do. There were just too many Daleks. He couldn't let anyone else die for him today.

"Do as he says," he begged his friends.

They all obeyed, hesitantly, one by one, but they obeyed. The Doctor felt no easier, his body vibrating with nervous energy. It had been bad enough when it was just Donna in Davros' clutches.

"The final prophecy is in place," Davros said, and the Doctor really wished he would just shut up. "The Doctor and his children, all gathered as witnesses." The Doctor was thrown briefly by his wording, but he couldn't allow himself to be distracted. "Supreme Dalek," the maniac continued, "the time has come." In an incongruously human display of emotion, he put a hand to his head as if overcome. The Doctor found himself wishing he could be sick again. "Now: detonate the Reality Bomb!"

The Doctor knew that the words were unnecessary, that Davros just wanted to feel like he was in control, giving orders to the Daleks, but that was cold comfort. The prisoners were forced to watch on the screen as the bomb's green heart was uncovered.

"ACTIVATE PLANETARY ALIGNMENT FIELD." The outlines of the planets that were visible started to glow. "UNIVERSAL REALITY DETONATION IN TWO HUNDRED RELS."

Two hundred seconds. Just over three minutes until the end of everything, ever. And the Doctor still didn't have a plan.

"You can't, Davros!" The Doctor shouted, knowing he had to try. "Just listen to me! Just stop!" His old enemy only laughed, as well he might.

"Nothing can stop the detonation!" He exulted. "Nothing and no one!"

But in that moment, the Doctor heard the echoes of the best sound in the universe, coming to prove the lie of Davros' words.

The wind from the TARDIS' displacement swept like the breath of life through the Crucible. All of his companions looked up with expressions of hope on their faces, but the Doctor hardly noticed as his bond with the TARDIS burst back into glorious life, nearly driving him to his knees.

 _Rose!_ His heart sang, even as his head disagreed. "But that's…"

"Impossible," Davros finished, rolling backwards, sounding as confused as the Doctor felt. Even if it was Rose, she wouldn't be able to fly the TARDIS here. Unless…

The TARDIS doors burst open and golden light poured from them. The Doctor stumbled back a few paces, constrained from retreating further by the forcefield surrounding him. He barely felt it.

"Rose. Oh, love. Not again," he breathed.

He felt the same awe and fear as before, at Rose's relentless desire to keep him safe, but where the last time he had only felt shock and bewilderment, now relief was entwined with it. Now he knew why the TARDIS had been hiding herself from him - to keep from overloading their bond. And if Bad Wolf had been the only way to keep Rose and the TARDIS safe, then at least he knew what to do.

He firmed his resolve. He'd been prepared to take the shot for Rose in the street, and some part of him had known that he wouldn't be getting out of this without a regeneration, if he was able to get out at all. He still had regenerations left. If that was the only price he had to pay to get Rose and the rest of them out alive he would take it and be grateful.

Rose stood silhouetted inside the doors, haloed in the light of Time, and the Doctor thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful, and so terrifying. He hadn't liked to think about what had happened on the Game Station, unable to see past the danger to Rose, but he was forced to admit it to himself now.

"Doctor!" Jack's voice shook, and the Doctor wondered briefly if being so close to the entity that had created him was affecting him in some way. "Is that-?"

His question didn't really require an answer, so the Doctor didn't give one, unsure he was even capable of speech. He'd told Jack what Rose had done; he knew what was happening as well as the Doctor did.

The golden light swirled in gorgeous eddies, and when it settled Rose was standing before him. He stared unabashedly at this goddess who had created herself, all to save his life.

"Brilliant." Jack uttered the word like a curse, and the Doctor agreed.

"My Doctor," Bad Wolf intoned, sending the same frisson down his spine as the first time she'd said it. Still no words came; he was silenced by her golden eyes and the force of power emanating from her.

"IT IS THE ABOMINATION!" The Daleks' shrill cries shattered the moment. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"

"Kill her!" Davros roared, pointing.

But that hadn't worked the last time and it wouldn't work now. Rose raised her hand, halting the beams in their tracks and he felt the ripple as she reversed time so they retracted back into the gun arms.

The humans all had identical expressions of open-mouthed shock on their faces. The Doctor simply watched, waiting for the moment it would be safe to take the power out of her. Last time, the Doctor remembered, there had been tears, shimmering tracks through the gold on her cheeks. There were none now; she looked slightly more resolute, as if more of Rose's personality was coming through.

"I am the Bad Wolf," she said calmly. "I cannot be uncreated. So long as your false gods and their prophets exist I shall return to thwart you."

She snapped her fingers. A klaxon sounded, and the Daleks went into panic mode.

"SYSTEM IN SHUTDOWN."

"DETONATION NEGATIVE."

"EXPLAIN. EXPLAIN. EXPLAIN!" The Supreme Dalek didn't sound smug at all now, quite the opposite.

The Doctor was happy to oblige, a wide grin on his face despite his continued terror for Rose.

"Well, given that she's currently in control of all of time and space, I'll wager you'll find she's reversed all the Z-neutrino relay loops so that they were never activated," he drawled, unable to completely keep the awe from his voice.

"You'll suffer for this," Davros snarled, raising his arm. The Doctor felt an instinctive beat of fear for Rose even as he knew it was unnecessary. He watched as she allowed the bolt to travel down his arm before reversing it, causing him to zap himself. The creator of the Daleks let out a cry of pain and he thought he heard Jack curse in delight, but he couldn't look away from the golden figure that was his beloved.

"Exterminate her!" Davros ordered, forgetting they'd tried that once already.

"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" the Daleks shrieked, obedient to a fault, and the goddess inclined her head in a very Rose-like gesture.

"No," she said simply, spreading her arms wide, and every single Dalek in the room froze.

The Doctor felt the shudder in timelines as she stopped time for each individual Dalek. She might not have the ability to control matter the way she had before - if she did, she would have just melted all the Daleks instead - but he trembled at the sheer amount of power on display, knowing it was still dangerous enough for Rose.

Jack loosed yet another expletive, pumping a fist in the air before clapping a gobsmacked Mickey on the shoulder. Martha's expression mirrored Mickey's.

"Spaceman! You never said your girlfriend could do that!" Donna sounded beside herself.

But the force fields were still in effect, and the Doctor kept his eyes trained on Rose, silently beseeching her to release them so he could help her.

She looked back to meet his eyes and he was captured by their golden depths. Suddenly the fear he was feeling was not entirely for Rose.

"I will release you now," she said, and he struggled to find anything of the woman he loved in the cadence. "And you will not attempt to remove the power from me in any way. It will take us both to return the planets to their rightful places. My control over the timelines is not limitless."

The Doctor was cowed by the utter emotionlessness of his beloved's face, and it was all he could do to give a tiny nod to convey his understanding. Rose didn't react further, simply raised her hands after a moment and the force fields retracted into the ceiling.

Despite the time pressure, the Doctor and Donna stood frozen for a moment, staring at each other. It was Donna who broke away first, turning towards the gaggle of his former companions who were still staring at Rose in amazement. The Doctor could sympathise, but Donna quickly took charge.

"All right, you numpties, Spacegirl over there said this was temporary, so get your rears in gear and let's take care of these oversized pepper pots!"

The little group shook off its collective stupor, and the Doctor immediately dismissed them. They were in good hands. He had the dual problems presented by the twenty-seven planets and Rose burning to deal with.

"Love…" It somehow felt wrong to address the glorious being before him as Rose, maybe because he knew it was only half of the truth.

Still, this was the woman who had only very recently been restored to him after far too long apart, and he'd been spending the larger part of the time since fearing for her life. He needed to reassure himself that she was still with him, feel her skin on his…

"Best not," Rose warned, pulling away slightly and the Doctor realised he'd been unconsciously reaching for her. He shook himself, grateful that she'd at least sounded a bit like herself as her face softened into something more recognisibly human. "I promise I'm all right, my Doctor. Don't be afraid."

"Might as well tell water not to be wet," the Doctor scoffed under his breath, but felt strangely reassured at the same time.

"Come on, then," he said, pushing everything else aside to be dealt with later. "We've got twenty-seven planets to send home!"

He vaulted over the control panel and surveyed the layout before him, identifying the necessary pieces. An instant and a swirl of golden dust later Rose stood beside him, a shimmering statue.

 _Please hold on, love,_ he silently begged, shuddering inwardly as his words unintentionally mirrored those he'd screamed at this same woman in a blinding-bright white room. _Just a little longer. I can save you. Just stay with me._

The manic grin he shot her held nothing of his true emotions - he'd gotten even better at that since they'd been apart - and he looked away just long enough to work the controls.

"Activate magnetron!"

"Stop this at once!" Davros had recovered; he raised his arm again, this time pointed at the Doctor. He saw Rose's eyes flash gold as she moved to stand between him and Davros, but before either of them could do anything, Jack came running out of the TARDIS with his massive gun.

"Mickey!" He tossed the gun to the other man, who stepped forward as Davros continued to advance.

"You will desist!" Davros ordered, but Mickey stepped into point blank range, cocking the weapon.

"Just stay where you are, mister," he said, and the Doctor felt a rush of relief that Rose hadn't needed to intervene.

All around them, the others were shoving and otherwise neutralising the frozen Daleks and he finally felt it was safe to turn his attention to his task. Rose was already working the controls with single-minded efficiency and while he knew it was the knowledge of the TARDIS flowing through her it didn't make him any less proud. He hurried to carry out his part.

"Ready?" he asked, mostly out of habit since Rose had effortlessly matched her motions to his. "And - reverse."

They pulled out the magnetron rods in perfect sync and began throwing levers as they sent the planets back one by one. The Doctor leaped and bounded around the panel like he did the TARDIS console whereas Rose never seemed to move and yet was always in exactly the right spot.

"Off you go, Clom," the Doctor announced, as Rose rattled off names in her half monotone.

"Adipose Three, Shallacatop, Pyrovillia."

"The Lost Moon of Poosh, sorted!" the Doctor exclaimed, thinking of Dee Dee as he threw the lever.

The planets were vanishing from their little time pocket, one by one, but resistance was increasing exponentially. Without the magnetron holding them in place, the rift was becoming more and more unstable.

"We need more power," the Doctor muttered to himself, wishing he could hide the fact from Rose for fear of what she might do. But she knew already, of course, and even as the Doctor reached into his pocket to pull out the sonic she placed a hand on the panel. Her glow dimmed slightly, and the Doctor knew they had all the power they'd ever need.

"Ha!" he crowed, resolutely burying all thoughts of how much danger Rose was in. "Just what we needed! Allons-y!" They worked in tandem to fix the rest of the planets. Davros' voice rose from behind them.

"But you promised me, Dalek Caan," he lamented. "Why did you not foresee this?"

The Doctor pushed his specs up his nose, glancing toward them briefly before turning back to the cables at the bottom of the panel where he was redirecting the energy flow. "Oh, I think he did."

 _And one of them will burn_ … The memory of the words was overlaid by Caan's present laughter and while the Doctor knew that the mad Dalek had been implying this outcome all along, the other meaning was still a very real possibility the longer the situation went unaddressed.

"This would always have happened," Caan giggled. "I only helped, Doctor."

Something tickled at the edges of his time senses; a very different scene, with two of him, bizarrely, and Donna, in Rose's place but in far more danger. He was going to lose Donna, the Doctor realised, in that timeline, and he shook his head to force it back to the present. Rose had fought her way back to him, and he was _not_ going to lose her again. Not unless it was over every single one of his dead bodies.

"You betrayed the Daleks!" Davros hissed.

"I saw the Daleks," Caan replied. "What we have done, throughout time and space."

The Doctor looked up at his tone, wondering if there was more to what Caan said. He'd hated this creature so intensely, for so long, not just for what it had done, not just for escaping, but if he was being honest, for failing to execute its prime directive and not killing him when it had the chance. Obviously, he was grateful it hadn't now, but he wasn't sure how he felt about the thought that its sojourn in the Time War was responsible for the change.

"I saw the truth of us, Creator," Caan continued, "and I declared 'no more!'"

The Doctor froze, the shock of hearing his own words repeated back to him throwing him out of the moment completely and back to the ruins of Arcadia, the instant he'd made the fateful decision that would change the universe forever. How had Caan…? He started to tremble. Ever since he'd heard Davros over the subwave he'd been balancing on the edge of a precipice and now this had finally thrown him over.

Amidst the vividly remembered sensations of ash and dust and flames, a hand brushed his shoulder, and he nearly jumped out of his skin to see Rose beside him, a great and terrible compassion in her eyes.

He was drowning, but it gave him the strength he needed to snap out of the memory, and just in time, too.

"I WILL DESCEND TO THE VAULT." The Supreme Dalek's voice echoed through the ship as it floated down and the Doctor had a feeling that the rest of the fleet wasn't far behind.

"Heads up!" Jack shouted the warning to the others. But the Dalek was not focussed on the captives for the moment.

"DAVROS, YOU HAVE BETRAYED US," it accused its creator.

"It was Dalek Caan," Davros pleaded, and fierce satisfaction burned in the Doctor even as he worked, hearing the tremour in his old enemy's voice.

"THE VAULT WILL BE PURGED," the Supreme Dalek said, and the Doctor typed furiously. Just a few more seconds… "YOU WILL ALL BE EXTERMINATED."

There was a flash of gold and an explosion, and the Doctor rose to his feet, disorientated, unsure of how he'd gotten in that position in the first place.

"Like I was saying, feel this!" Jack quipped, and blasted the Dalek with his gun before tossing it back to Mickey, who was also rolling back to his feet after being forced to jump out of the way of the Dalek's beam.

The red Dalek exploded, and the Doctor looked around to find Rose at his back, stoic as ever, and he thought he could piece together what had happened. She'd used her powers to save them from the blast. He'd been too slow.

He recognised the twist in his time senses that meant they'd moved in the space between one instant and the next - an old Time Lord trick, and apparently Bad Wolf's preferred method of travel. He let out a curse. Because of his carelessness, he'd allowed Rose to expend even more of her energy.

"We've lost the magnetron," he announced to the room at large, though that fact was fairly obvious from the smoking console. "And there's only one planet left." He ran around the panel to confirm his analysis. Seeing which one it was, he couldn't suppress a laugh. Of course it would be the Earth. "Oh, guess which one. But we can use the TARDIS!"

The Doctor looked back at Rose. He was afraid, desperately afraid, of what would happen if he left the power of the Vortex to burn through Rose. Already she'd been holding it for far too long, and despite her assurances, he couldn't shake the feeling that her survival was a matter of moments.

It just wasn't _fair!_ Saving Rose would cause him to regenerate, and it was a sacrifice he was glad to make; and one he couldn't make, not with the fate of the Earth hanging in the balance. No one else was capable of doing what needed to be done to rectify either situation, and he could only choose one.

He cursed eloquently in Gallifreyan under his breath. Rose was always so strong. He was the one who dithered - _I could save the world but lose you_ \- while she made the tough decisions for him. But this time, it wasn't the remarkable nineteen-year-old that he felt responsible for, above and beyond the inkling of feelings he was beginning to admit to himself.

No, he'd had three years to come to terms with what his life without Rose Tyler would be like and he hadn't ever succeeded. Not only that: she'd fought her way back to his side, and he'd finally managed to present his fractured hearts to her, and she'd accepted them. There could be no going back, not for him. If he hadn't been able to sacrifice his brand new companion to save the world, how much less so his recently returned and claimed beloved?

Yet despite all that, or indeed because of it, he knew exactly what Rose would say. He hesitated another moment, loathe to leave Rose's side but knowing that each second he waited to finish the job was another second the Vortex remained inside Rose. With another muttered curse, he ran into the TARDIS to prepare, hearts beating a disjointed cadence in his chest, aware of the eyes of everyone in the Crucible on him.

"Holding Earth stability," Rose announced from outside, and the tone sounded exactly like her even if the words did not. "Maintaining atmospheric shell."

The Doctor tried to focus on how that was a good thing and not that Rose knew how to do it. The sooner he prepared the TARDIS, the sooner he could take the Vortex out of Rose.

He raced around the console with single-minded precision, setting all the dials to the correct positions.

All at once, there was a massive explosion. The TARDIS rocked, and the Doctor raced out in a panic, imagining any number of nightmare scenarios taking place in his absence. Instead, he found the Daleks detonating one by one, starting fires all over the Vault, but with his time senses, he could tell the destruction was much more widespread.

"Oh, Rose," he breathed, watching his beloved standing as a golden statue amidst the chaos. "What have you done?"

He'd known he'd have to deal with the Daleks eventually, that there could be only one solution, but it was to have been his burden: his penance for this oversight, bringing to a close the cycle that had begun that fateful day on Skaro. The last thing he'd wanted was to lay the responsibility on Rose's shoulders again.

"Fulfilling the prophecy," Rose responded, as though the Doctor's statement had been addressed to her. Her eyes were still filled with that awful compassion, and he shivered at the thought of how easily genocide came to her.

Shaking the feeling off to be dealt with later - everyone he cared about in this universe was currently aboard an exploding Dalek ship - he raised his voice above the explosions.

"Get in the TARDIS," he ordered, and they hurried to obey. "Everyone! All of you, inside! Run!"

He sounded them off as they entered. "Sarah Jane, Jack, Mickey! Martha! Donna!"

Rose appeared next to him in a golden swirl, and they shared a loaded glance as she walked serenely into the TARDIS. He nearly reached for her right then, the Earth and everyone else be damned, because what good was being a Lord of Time if he couldn't save the woman he loved? If he lost Rose because of what she'd been forced to do to save herself, after everything they'd been through…

But then the moment of madness passed, leaving him frozen uselessly in terror by the TARDIS doors, no use to anyone. Furious with himself, he turned his back on the Crucible, considering offering to save Davros for the briefest moment before dismissing the impulse.

It left a sour taste in his mouth, but he couldn't afford to be anything other than ruthlessly pragmatic, with both Rose and the Earth at stake. He had no time at all, much less time to waste on what he knew to be a lost cause. Davros, likewise, made no move to save himself.

"Never forget, Doctor, you did this." The accusation followed him into the TARDIS. "I name you! Forever, you are the Destroyer of Worlds!"

The mad scientist screamed his last, and the Doctor swallowed hard, the name, whatever its accuracy, settling heavily within him.

Slightly relieved, and ashamed at the relief, the Doctor raced through the unaccustomed crowd of people to reach the console, Davros' final condemnation still ringing in his ears.

"And off we go!" he exclaimed, as he threw the lever.


	7. Journey's End

"But what about the Earth?" Sarah Jane asked. "It's stuck in the wrong part of space."

"I'm on it," the Doctor said. Against all odds, they'd all made it out alive. He cast a sideways glance at Rose. They _would_ all make it out alive. He pulled up the subwave network.

"Torchwood hub, this is the Doctor. Are you receiving me?"

A woman who spoke with a soft Welsh lilt answered. " _Loud and clear. Is Jack there?_ "

"Can't get rid of him," the Doctor groused good-naturedly. "Jack, what's her name?"

"Gwen Cooper," Jack answered promptly, obvious pride in his voice.

"Tell me, Gwen Cooper, are you from an old Cardiff family?"

" _Yes, all the way back to the eighteen hundreds_ ," she replied, as though wondering how the information could be relevant.

It wasn't, but the question had been bothering the Doctor ever since he'd first seen her.

"Ah, thought so," he said, looking over at Rose out of habit as he did so. "Spatial genetic multiplicity." Rose said the words at the same time, and, trying not to think about why that was, he grinned at her.

"Yeah, it's a funny old world," the Doctor said instead, as he looked at the living proof arrayed around him. Back to business. "Now, Torchwood, I want you to open up that Rift Manipulator. Send all the power to me." He'd arranged things on his end while they were talking.

" _Doing it now, sir_." A handsome, capable looking man slid into frame briefly before going away again. It wasn't the first time the Doctor had had cause to think that Jack's pride in his team was completely justified.

"What's that for?" Donna asked.

"It's a tow rope," the Doctor answered, because past the advanced quantum mechanics calculations he was currently doing in his head, that's exactly what it was, or would be, anyway.

"Now then. Sarah, what was your son's name?"

"Luke. He's called Luke," she piped up eagerly, and the Doctor took a moment to join in her excitement: Sarah Jane, back on the TARDIS with him, saving the Earth. "And the computer's called Mister Smith."

He arched an eyebrow at that, but didn't comment. "Calling Luke and Mister Smith, this is the Doctor."

The poor boy looked shellshocked, and the Doctor could sympathise, but he needed results. "Come on, Luke, shake a leg."

" _Is Mum there?_ " the lad asked, and the Doctor spared another moment of relief for how he'd managed to escape with everyone intact.

"Oh, she's fine and dandy," he said, as Sarah Jane rejoiced to hear her son was safe. "Now, Mister Smith, I want you to harness the Rift power and loop it around the TARDIS. You got that?"

" _I regret I will need remote access to TARDIS base code numerals,_ " the computer responded.

The Doctor winced - he'd been afraid of that. Another machine _would_ need the base code to locate the TARDIS' coordinates in space time. He knew the code, of course, knew it as well as he knew his own name, though he used both as infrequently, but the number was similar to pi and he didn't have that kind of time.

"Blimey, that's going to take a while." He fisted his hands in his hair in anxious frustration. Each second ticked by like a death knell to his heart, another moment in which he wasn't saving Rose. It was taking all the effort he could spend just to behave normally, to not just scream, and keep screaming.

"No, no, no," Sarah Jane exclaimed, running around the console, as he looked up in surprise. "Let me. K9, out you come!"

The Doctor laughed for sheer delight when he heard the familiar "A _ffirmative, mistress_."

"Oh, good dog," he enthused. "K9, give Mister Smith the base code."

" _Master,_ " K9 acknowledged. " _TARDIS base code now being transferred. The process is simple._ " With the code stored in K9's memory banks and the processing speed of the two machines, K9's statement was no more than the truth.

The Doctor turned his attention to the final phase. "Now then, you lot." He made his way around the console, eyes flicking involuntarily to Rose and lingering there as he guided Sarah Jane back to her original spot, speaking to each of his companions in turn.

Rose leaned casually back against the railing, in stark contrast to his frenetic desperation. His hearts pounded erratically in his chest and she watched him as if she could see them beating. _Just a few more seconds, love. Please, Rose. Please._

"Sarah, hold that down. Mickey, hold that. Because you know why this TARDIS is always rattling about the place? - Donna? That, there," he said, indicating the controls she'd learned to use during her impromptu flying lesson.

Rose hadn't moved, though she made a disapproving noise at his statement and arched a challenging eyebrow. It was a common enough expression for Rose and yet held nothing of the woman he loved in her face. Suppressing a shudder, the Doctor pushed himself to move faster, to explain faster. Nothing was fast enough. Rose had come back to save his life, twice now, with the power of the Vortex running through her veins. He was a Lord of Time and he was damned if the lack of it would cost him Rose's life.

"It's designed to have six pilots, and I have to do it single-handed." His mouth flew a mile a minute, spouting meaningless words that he forgot the instant he uttered them. Faster, always faster. "Martha, keep that level - but not any more. Jack, there you go." He could feel Jack's gaze on him and knew that he, at least, wasn't fooled, but the Doctor couldn't look away from Rose. "Steady that."

Everything was in place. Despite the situation, his hearts swelled nearly to bursting. His friends all stood around the console, and they were going to fly his ship, together. He would regenerate in the midst of the people who meant the most to him in the universe (that is, until he moved to another room to keep them safe). It might be his easiest regeneration yet. Certainly one of the most willing.

Anything for Rose.

"Now we can fly this thing, like it's meant to be flown. We've got the Torchwood Rift looped around the TARDIS by Mister Smith, and we're going to fly planet Earth back home."

"Bout time someone did," Rose laughed, the sound dropping like a cascade of pebbles into the sudden silence. "And less of 'thing' business, if you don't mind."

The Doctor gulped at the further reminder that Rose wasn't yet herself. Mickey and Jack exchanged a worried look as the TARDIS' other occupants shifted uneasily. He hadn't been as successful at deflection as he might have wished. His hearts twisted in his chest as he ran back around to the dematerialisation lever, still clinging to the slender thread of outrageous hope that he wasn't already too late.

"Right then. Off we go." He threw the lever without any of his usual exuberance, and they went into flight so smoothly it felt almost wrong. He'd nearly forgotten what it was like to travel by properly-flown TARDIS.

He made some final adjustments, then looked around at all of his friends for the last time with these eyes. It was time. He couldn't wait another second to take the Vortex out of Rose. He knew he would start to regenerate immediately, but he would be able to hold it off at least until the Earth was back home.

Rose couldn't.

He approached her, and she watched him come, head cocked with a knowing smile on her face. It just left him feeling cold, wanting his Rose back. The Doctor hoped his next body would be just as attractive to Rose as this one had been. He hated the thought of regenerating so soon after Rose had found him, but there was nothing else he could do.

"Rose?" he said, holding out his hands in supplication. "It's time now, love. The planets are safe. I can't let you burn." His focus narrowed until all he could see was Rose. "Come here."

She made no objection, didn't speak at all, in fact, and took his hands, going willingly into his embrace. Aware of the press of time, he bent down to kiss her.

He couldn't help a rueful smile from playing about his lips. He'd never regenerated twice in the same way before. It might have been a bit overdramatic, but he'd never gotten to kiss Rose Tyler enough in this body, and now it was too late.

Unable to resist, he whispered, "I promise, there are easier ways to get me to kiss you, and whatever I look like next, I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you."

Rose gave an ambiguous chuckle as their lips met, and he promptly forgot everything else. The sensation of kissing Rose was still so new, and he lost himself in it, even as he reached for the golden fire that would end his life.

Moments passed, and nothing happened. The Doctor felt the bottom drop out of his insides. He couldn't find it. He was too late. His mind was numb with horror, or else he would have been shrieking madly at the uncaring universe. Rose's grasp was the only thing keeping him from shaking like a leaf. He'd made the only possible choice, and it was still Rose who paid the price.

Rose nipped at his bottom lip, and the unexpected action broke him away from the kiss. He stared at her, uncomprehending, as her lips curved up in an enigmatic smile.

"Excellent," she said, still in the tones of Bad Wolf. "I win."

He couldn't understand the words. Nothing made sense, Rose was dying, and he didn't have the slightest idea of how to save her. He'd chosen to let Rose stay as Bad Wolf to preserve the atmospheric shell, he'd chosen the safety of billions of lives over Rose's safety. And he almost hadn't been able to do it. And now she was going to burn. He was going to have to watch her die, barely a day after getting her back.

This was it, this was his punishment, his damnation for taking the fate of the universe onto his own shoulders. To be presented with the same choice, a planet against his own personal universe, and know that there was no right answer, only pain. There must have been something he missed, something more he could have done.

He needed to blame himself, to pump more and more of that dark, poisonous regret into his hearts, because he refused to believe that he could have done everything right and yet still lost Rose. It seemed too cruel of a sentence, even for his crimes.

"Rose?" He didn't know what to say, what to do, what she needed, but he knew he could never give up until he destroyed himself. He was just about to kiss her again, mindlessly seeking her lips, but Rose stopped him.

Her smile turned more wicked, into an expression the Doctor was fairly certain the real Rose had never worn. "Only half," she said, playing with his tie. "No regenerating for you today, my Thief." The Doctor gaped. Since when had Rose called him that?

She met his eyes as her own flashed gold. "We happen to like this face." She patted his cheek.

The Doctor flinched, half-certain he'd died already, somehow, or at the very least gone mad, and this was hell.

"Don't fret, Rose is perfectly safe. I just wanted to say: Hello, Doctor. It's so very nice to meet you."

"What?" The Doctor was reeling. Before he could make any sense of what was happening, Rose shut her eyes on a sigh.

The Doctor's hearts stopped cold in his chest as she sagged gently in his arms. He clutched Rose to him, holding her up, fingers scrambling for a pulse. He found it strong and steady as ever as Rose nuzzled into his chest. When she opened her eyes again, the gold in them had blessedly reduced to their accustomed flecks. She smiled widely.

"Hello."

Before he could respond, her expression shifted into something like regret. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I didn't mean to put you through all that." She reached up to cup his cheek and the Doctor laid his hand over hers unthinkingly.

"I'm perfectly safe, Doctor. I always was." Rose spoke slowly, sincerely, each word feeling like it was on a direct line to his hearts. "I didn't look into the Heart of the TARDIS, I didn't need to. The TARDIS and I were already merged, from before, she just showed me how to tap back into it. But that part's asleep again, locked away. I promise, you can run as many tests as you like on me once this is over. She just wanted a chance to say goodbye."

The Doctor couldn't help but breathe a laugh as he felt his heartsbeat slow to something approximating normal, the bright flashes of panic fading from his vision. He had so many questions, but for now he had no choice but to accept Rose's explanation.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he joked, caressing her forehead as though to check for temperature. "I could have sworn you just _volunteered_ for tests…" He trailed off as the second part of Rose's statement hit him, and he matched it with her earlier strange behaviour.

"Rose…?"

"So, can I have my kiss now?" she asked innocently. "I've been working hard over here."

"Wh- What?" the Doctor spluttered, unable to believe what he was hearing.

Rose took matters into her own hands, rising on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his lips. "So, who d'you like kissing more, Doctor, me or the TARDIS?"

Rose's tongue teased him from the corner of her mouth. The Doctor's jaw dropped. His ship chirped, and Rose arched an eyebrow, reminding him of what they were doing.

"Right!" The Doctor shook his head from side to side to clear it. Later. Always later. The Doctor knew he'd be paying for it soon, everything he'd shoved to the side in the course of this awful day, but then, what else was new? "Planet Earth!"

He turned back to the console, correcting things that didn't need to be corrected. Before Rose could wander away he grasped her hand, as though keeping her with him physically could stave off the worries that still haunted him. Rose shot him an understanding glance and squeezed his hand, staying where she was. The Doctor let out a short breath of relief.

"Everything all right then, babe?" Mickey piped up.

"'Course it is, Micks, we did it!" Rose exclaimed, a little too brightly, and they smiled at each other. Mickey's gaze drifted to the Doctor, who was doing his best to look unaffected. Rose followed his gaze, and her smile faltered slightly before she plastered it on again.

"The Doctor just had to make sure," she explained.

"Knew you couldn't handle a backseat driver," Jack quipped.

Rose giggled, but the Doctor glared at the other man, who met his eyes unflinching. Beneath the humour, he could tell that what Jack had seen had affected him more than he was letting on - well, that made two of them.

"Just because the power is locked away again doesn't mean I can't tell you need to pay more attention to that stabiliser," she said, and Jack sketched a mocking salute.

"Yes, ma'am."

Donna scoffed. "She sounds just fine to me. Honestly, Spaceman here loves making mountains out of molehills." The TARDIS' occupants shared tentative grins, while the Doctor rolled his eyes.

"Yes, thank-you, Donna." He only wished he were as confident as he sounded. Then Sarah Jane shot him a subtle look and he wondered why he even bothered. As grateful as he was that his friends were all here and safe, he needed time alone with Rose.

They flew the Earth back the rest of the way in a breathless mood of anticipation. Rose quieted after that, and he wondered just how much she remembered of her time spent as Bad Wolf. If she was aware of all the covert glances his other companions snuck her, she gave no sign.

She had become something of a myth in her absence, the Doctor had to admit. Donna had had a bit of time to grow accustomed to her presence but Martha was still looking like she still couldn't quite believe Rose was real. Jack had gotten his first glimpse of Bad Wolf, as had Sarah Jane, who was also one of the only people the Doctor had confided in about Rose's loss.

The Doctor told himself it didn't matter. Everyone was alive and well, and would remain so. He was still getting used to the thought that he wouldn't need to change his face. Ever since they'd landed on Earth and felt it quake beneath them he'd remained at least half convinced that this was the day he died. He was grateful, of course, indescribably grateful and happy that out of the ruins of what had been his reunion with Rose he'd managed to salvage a day when everybody lived, but it also meant he was still waiting for something to go wrong.

His fears were proved groundless, however, and when they dropped the Earth off in its rightful place everyone erupted into cheers and celebration. The exuberance in the console room matched the chaos on the planet below as everyone rejoiced in the unspeakable pleasure of simply being alive. Martha and Donna embraced and Mickey and Jack high fived.

The Doctor found himself swept into Sarah Jane's arms, both of them laughing uproariously; in the Doctor's case, at least, because he needed a way to relieve the impossible tension.

Then Sarah moved on to Jack and the Doctor met Martha's eyes in person for the first time since Messaline. They shared a slightly weightier embrace, Martha taking the opportunity to whisper in the Doctor's ear how happy she was for him. The Doctor's gaze flicked involuntarily to Rose, who was clinging to Mickey.

Next in line was Donna; he tried to communicate in his hold all of his gratitude for her part in keeping him together, and the pain of that aborted timeline in which he lost her so irreparably - in which she lost herself - and when Donna squeezed him back, he thought she might know too.

"Now go spend some time with your girlfriend, spaceman, you deserve it," his best mate told him.

This time, when he looked up, Rose was looking at him, and he fell into her eyes, which were still their proper warm brown. She was real, and safe, and here with him, and he was floating, wrapped in her arms without being fully aware of how he'd gotten there, as he gripped her just as tightly.

"See? Told ya we'd make it through," she murmured, but he just pulled her closer in response, meshing the lines of their bodies together, the matter still too near for him to reference so flippantly. "We did it, Doctor."

He nodded into her hair, effervescent joy infusing every single one of his cells as he saw the future stretch before them, leaving him breathless and trembling as their lips met, drawn together as though by a magnet.

"We did," he acknowledged in a whisper against her lips, "and any other universe-ending crises are going to have to get in line, because I am not going to allow us to be interrupted again."

Her hum of agreement travelled through his whole body. "And what, exactly, would they be interrupting, Doctor?" Rose inquired breathily, surveying him from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, and that was a challenge the Doctor found himself incapable of ignoring.

Shifting his hold slightly, he dipped her almost to the grating, accompanied by her squeak of surprise, and wasted no more time doing what he should have done the first time he'd had her in this position, kissing her passionately as she clung to him and gasped.

Then Jack was applauding, Donna was whistling, and they were forcibly brought back to the present with reddened faces, refusing to meet anyone's eyes as he landed them in a sunny, peaceful London park.

Bright sun and a warm breeze swept into the TARDIS when the Doctor opened the door, along with the sound of church bells ringing out the celebratory mood. Sarah Jane was the first to depart, offering her parting words cautiously

"You know, you act like such a lonely man," she said, giving him a once over. The Doctor wasn't sure if the daft grin was still on his face and if it was what he could do to banish it. "But look at you. You've got the biggest family on Earth."

They shared another brief, tight hug, and the Doctor thought he might be able to see his way to not acting like he was lonely in future, seeing as he had no intention of being so for the rest of Rose's life.

"Oh! Got to go!" Sarah Jane came back to herself with a wide smile. "He's only fourteen. It's a long story." Of course, Luke would be needing his mother. "And thank-you!"

As Sarah Jane hurried away before he could return the sentiment, Donna stepped out of the TARDIS, a mobile to her ear. "Yeah, I'm fine. Are you all right?" She didn't sound too concerned, so he assumed her family was probably safe.

He turned to Jack next, holding out his hand for the Vortex Manipulator.

"Oh, do you have to?" Rose sidled out with Martha, eyebrow arched. "I think he's proven he can be trusted, don't you?"

The Doctor fought the urge to roll his eyes; he should have known Rose would take Jack's side. The thing was, he had a suspicion she was right. Aside from any other help the former time agent had rendered during their most recent adventure, he was the reason Rose was standing beside him today. Perhaps it was time to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Oh, all right," he groused, pointedly ignoring the wide grin that spread over Jack's face at his concession. He assumed Rose would insist on keeping contact with Jack from now on anyway, which would help him keep an eye on things. "And, Martha, get rid of that Osterhagen thing, eh? Save the world one more time." He trusted her completely to be the one to do it, and was further justified by her response.

"Consider it done." His two former companions snapped him identical sharp salutes, which he returned laconically. They walked off, hand in hand, a detail Rose did not fail to note and point out to him with a nod and a waggle of her eyebrows. The Doctor just shook his head.

Mickey was the next to step out of the TARDIS.

"Mickey!" Rose exclaimed. "Where d'you think you're off to?"

"I'm not stupid, babe," Mickey said. The Doctor scoffed, but his heart wasn't really in it, and Mickey only grinned. "You and the Doc need some time to yourselves and it's not like I didn't just see you the other day when you jumped for the last time."

Rose frowned. "Why did you jump, Micks? That wasn't part of the plan."

"Yeah, well I delivered the letters, and Jackie might've said something about making sure you don't get hurt… and making sure the Doctor takes proper care of you," he said, with a cheeky wink at the Doctor's sound of outrage. "Besides, since Gran passed I've had a lot of time to think and I realised there's nothing for me in that universe any more. And since you're going to be in this one, I figure I'll stick around."

Rose folded the other man in an embrace as the Doctor asked, "What'll you do?"

"Anything," Mickey replied, as Rose released him. "Brand new life. Just you watch."

"We'll talk later, yeah?" Rose said, blinking back tears. "I'll still have my mobile."

"'Course, babe. You can't get rid of me that easily," he said, and she sniffed a laugh. Mickey turned to the Doctor. "See you, boss." He turned and jogged after Jack and Martha, who had nearly left the park. It seemed like all of Rose's friends would be working in the same place, at least for a while. Rose leaned into his side and sighed, and he held her close.

He knew she would miss Jackie and her family, but with Mickey back in this universe at least she wouldn't have to feel so alone. He didn't quite know how to bring it up, but Rose did it for him.

"Mum…" Her voice faltered a little, but she carried on. "Mum knows. We treated every jump like it was a proper goodbye, and I left letters for everyone to be delivered if I ever found you. She knows I'm here, that I'm with you, and I'm safe." She turned to press her face into his shoulder. "I'm gonna miss her," she said in a smaller voice.

The Doctor just held her tighter, but before he could respond, Donna rang off and came back to meet them.

"My family's all right, mum's complaining and granddad's soldiering on, as always." Fondness suffused her voice as she spoke, and he knew what was coming next. "I should go home for a bit, spend some time with them, like I was going to before this whole thing started."

"Of course you should," the Doctor said, nodded, but his expression changed to one of confusion when Donna started to walk into the TARDIS. Seeing his look, Donna rolled her eyes.

"You can drop me off home, Spaceman, the roads are going to be murder. But if we end up needing to save the universe again, I'll kill you."

The Doctor chuckled. "Fair enough. I don't think I could handle another one," he said, as he guided both ladies into the TARDIS. Making his way to the console, he mused aloud, "Seeing as we don't need to make a stop in the other universe to drop off Mister Mickey-" or, he selfishly prayed, Rose - but Rose shuddered and be broke off to glance at her.

"If I never see that bloody beach again it'll be too soon," she muttered in response to his unspoken query, and his hearts sang at the explicit proof that she was intending to stay in this universe.

Secretly, he agreed with her - he never wanted to set eyes on that beach again. Not when he had Rose warm and whole in his arms. He didn't ever want to let her go, even though he knew it was unconscionable, not to at least give her the option of returning to her mother.

"Right then," he said, a bit more loudly perhaps than necessary. "Chiswick it is!"

He threw the lever, the ride back to its usual wild bumpiness, and felt a jolt of warmth suffuse his body when Rose gripped him to keep herself steady.

"Thank you, Doctor," she whispered in his ear, just above the sound of the time rotor, but before he could ask her what for, they'd landed.

This time, they were right across the street from Donna's house. The Doctor and Rose watched from inside the TARDIS as Donna knocked on her own front door. It opened a moment later, as Wilf barrelled out to fold his granddaughter in a huge hug. He looked up, and seeing them over Donna's shoulder he snapped a smart salute. The Doctor waved with the hand not wrapped tightly around Rose's shoulders, and the man bundled Donna into the house without further fanfare.

As he closed the TARDIS doors behind them, it suddenly struck the Doctor that he was finally alone with Rose. He froze, the consequences of the day crashing down on him all at once as Rose made a slow circuit around the console, as if to refamiliarise herself with her surroundings.

"So, Donna'll call us when she wants to get picked back up, right?" she asked, back turned to him. "I haven't forced her out or anything, she knows she's welcome back?" When he didn't respond she turned back to him, and whatever she'd been about to say died on her lips when she caught sight of the expression on his face.

"Doctor."

Suddenly, he was in her arms, not sure how he'd gotten there, only remarkably glad that he was.

"Rose." Her name was a breath of thanksgiving, and he reciprocated the embrace by folding his arms around her, mostly just allowing himself to be held. He'd missed her. He'd missed her so much. And he'd nearly lost her. Again.

He didn't realise he was on the verge of hyperventilating until his respiratory bypass kicked in, and it wasn't until it did that he could hear Rose's murmured reassurances.

"I'm here, Doctor. I made it back to you. We're together now, everything's gonna be all right."

For the first time since the nightmare began, the Doctor began to believe that it could possibly be true. He savoured the sensation of simply being close to Rose, fighting his way to believing that he could have this: everything he'd ever wanted, after so long. He closed his eyes in rapture, just breathing her in. It was a moment before he came back to himself and heard Rose still whispering, perhaps not as collected as she was trying to make herself out to be.

"I did it," she repeated, over and over. "I did it, I found you again, I'm back."

"You did," the Doctor murmured, and they both jolted against each other slightly in surprise to hear his voice. "You did it, my brave, clever, precious girl. You made it back."

Before he could think about what he was doing he was pressing his lips to hers, and Rose opened with a whimper to his tongue. Her hands fisted automatically in his hair and the tugging sensation on his scalp nearly drove him wild.

He kissed her until Rose, with her lack of respiratory bypass, had to break for air, and he realised part of him had still been searching for the energy he'd found so easily before, to take the Vortex out of her - it had nearly jumped out of her, the last time. It was difficult for him to see the lack of it as a good thing and not an indication that she was soon going to burst into flames.

That thought had him clenching his fists involuntarily in her jacket, but Rose only kissed him calmly in response, stepping slightly away from his embrace and stopping when his grip wouldn't let her move any further.

"Doctor, we're still parked outside Donna's, yeah?" She smiled a little. "What say we go into the Vortex, make a giant pot of tea and some popcorn, and just binge some intergalactic cable for a while? I've gotta catch up on _By the Light of the Asteroid_."

The Doctor laughed, perhaps for a little longer than the statement warranted. Just the idea of a quiet evening in the media room with Rose, kicking back after saving the universe, was the perfect representation of what he thought he'd never have again, and his joy couldn't be contained. He opened his mouth to reply, but Rose put a finger over his lips.

"I know you're going to say you want to run some tests, and I know I promised, so we will. But I'm knackered, and you don't look much better, and there's nothing that can't wait until morning. I swear." She emphasized her words with two taps and he grinned in spite of himself.

It was true, he wanted to run every test imaginable starting hours ago, but he also couldn't deny the truth of her words - they were both in no fit state, and the TARDIS had been in the back of his head emphatically confirming Rose's words that all was well since they'd dropped off the Earth. He'd never known his ship to lie to him before - the old girl huffed indignantly at that thought - so it was enough to reassure him that he could leave it for the length of an evening.

"I was going to say," he said around his grin, as she removed her finger, "that sounds fantastic, Rose Tyler."

He worked quickly to move them to the Vortex, and once they were in flight, Rose went to press a kiss to his cheek, but he turned his head quickly before she got there and turned it into a much longer snog.

"All right, mister," Rose said breathlessly as she broke away. "Not that I'm at all opposed to continuing this," she indicated the two of them, "and all it entails, but God do I need a shower." The Doctor nodded - he could probably use one, too.

Rose gave the same gentle smile, and he could see her own reluctance in how she stepped away. "So, showers, and then we'll meet in the media room for all the two and a half episodes I'll be able to stay awake for."

She turned to walk away, and it was almost on the Doctor's lips to call her back, to ask if she'd be amenable to sharing - despite not being at all sure that they were ready to take that step together yet - but he stopped himself at the last minute. Everything was fine. Rose was back. He could handle showering by himself. Shaking his head at his own weakness, he thought of all the episodes Rose had to catch up on and smiled at the thought of finally being able to share them with her.


	8. And What Comes After

Rose had just finished her shower and was rubbing a towel through her hair when she noticed that the TARDIS' hum had changed. She'd been more attuned to it since returning to this universe and even more so since becoming Bad Wolf again.

This sound filled her with apprehension, and she didn't stop to think, instead wrapping the towel around her and stepping out into the corridor. The TARDIS was leading her somewhere she'd never been before, but she scarcely spared a thought for her unfamiliar surroundings.

There was a single door at the end of the hall and Rose opened it without hesitation, driven by the sense of urgency she could feel from the TARDIS, halting only when she saw the room on the other side. It was the same room the Doctor had taken her to sleep in - had it only been the night before? It felt like it years - and she could hear the shower running in the en suite.

She hesitated again- surely the Doctor had to be all right if he was in the shower - but the TARDIS only pushed more urgently in response and it overrode Rose's reluctance. She pushed open the door to the bathroom without even bothering to knock, in a move that would have felt uncomfortably bold were it not for her worry for the Doctor.

"Doctor?" she called, over the sound of water. The room was filled with steam - he'd clearly been in there for a while - and she could barely see. "Doctor, are you all right? I'm sorry, it's just, the TARDIS…"

Her voice caught in her throat as she found the Doctor, standing motionless under the stream of water, elbows braced against the wall and both hands fisted in his hair, hunched over as though the weight of the spray was too much to bear. She froze - she'd never seen the Doctor looking so vulnerable, or so human. She ignored his state of nakedness - she could sense distress radiating from him and she bit her lip at the realisation that he'd just been pretending, in the console room.

He really wasn't all right.

 _How could he be?_ Her inner voice was scathing. _His mind was invaded by an evil entity and then he nearly watched you die in front of him right after getting you back and then he thought you were going to burn. Of course he's not all right._

Listing it all out like that made it blatantly obvious that the Doctor had been through hell these past forty-eight hours. That knowledge had her moving before she was consciously aware of it, reaching out a tentative hand for the Doctor's shoulder.

"Doctor?"

The instant their skin touched, the Doctor jumped as though an electrical current had shot through his body, and his eyes snapped to hers, flat and dark and more than a little mad. She couldn't stop herself from falling back a tiny step - the expression held nothing human at all, even worse than when he'd nearly lost her to the Dalek.

"Rose?" the Doctor rasped.

Rose smiled, but the Doctor was already shaking his head.

"No, how can you be here? You can't be here, you're in the parallel world…"

Rose's heart sank. This reaction was more along the lines of what she'd been expecting when she first jumped back into this universe, for their encounter in the galley, and it threw her for a moment. Before she could think of how to respond, the Doctor continued.

"If you think you're going to get to me by impersonating her, you are very much mistaken. Rose Tyler keeps me strong, keeps me fighting. I will always believe in her."

Rose's eyes stung with tears, and she swallowed to speak past the lump in her throat. "Doctor, it's me. I promise it's me. We've been through this once already." She hesitated before reaching out again, taking his hands. He shuddered deeply at her touch, but it was not a pleasurable reaction.

The TARDIS surged in her head, and she knew what she had to do - what she _should_ have done, long before. Rose lifted the Doctor's hands to her temples. "Can I… Will you let me show you?" She held her breath.

Simple astonishment flashed across his features as he drew in a ragged breath, and it was that more than anything else that led him to accept, Rose was sure. She wondered, briefly, how long it had been since anyone had asked him to initiate telepathic contact.

She was grateful for his consent, but he was not gentle, and Rose winced as their surroundings fell away and he entered her mind.

 _How much of an idiot do you think I am?_ The Doctor's voice boomed and cracked in her head. _Rose, the_ real _Rose, can't do this, and more than that, she hates telepathy, so you are going to tell me,_ right _now… Oh._ His voice trailed off as he registered where he was and the love and welcome Rose was at pains to project. _Rose._

The sudden, tentative hope she could sense from him galvanised her and she did her best to wrap the Doctor's presence in all the comfort she could muster.

 _Doctor, you've blocked yourself off from the TARDIS somehow,_ Rose said, striving for calm. _She can't reach you and she doesn't know why, so she came and got me. That's why I'm here. Please trust me, my Doctor. I found you, I came back to you two days ago, and we saved the universe today. I was just showering in my room, and then we were going to snog in front of bad telly all night until I fell asleep._

She replayed each scene as she spoke; their reunion, and waking up together, walking among the planets at the Shadow Proclamation and him dipping her to the grating after they saved the Earth, right up to her mental image of her plan for the evening: of the two of them entwined on the couch, program completely forgotten. This is what telepathy was meant to be used for, and she could feel him watching her intently as the pictures flicked by.

Once she'd finished, it was like a wall crumbled to dust in the blink of an eye. He was suddenly with her, surrounding her, but his emotions were all over the place and she couldn't get a read on them. She tried to direct his focus to the positive but his thoughts were too chaotic for her to keep up.

 _How are you doing this, Rose?_ They were suddenly standing on a barren heath, their bodies obscured by fog. Her heart ached that this was location his mind had conjured. She was fairly certain that he was fully dressed with his coat on, and she spared a thought to hope he'd afforded her the same courtesy.

 _I told you about Bad Wolf, didn't I? Merging with the TARDIS gave me telepathic abilities and now that they've been reawakened I can actually use them._ Rose was surprised - she hadn't actually known any of that beforehand and realised the TARDIS had to be feeding her information. _But never mind that just now: look, Doctor. Look in my mind, I'll prove to you that everything's all right. Better than all right. Whatever you need._

He came towards her slowly and put his fingers up to her temples, which surprised her since they were already in his mind.

 _Your perception of what I'm doing in your head,_ the Doctor explained absently. Rose tried to open her mind to him as fully as possible, but he pulled back almost immediately, awe and something like fear crossing his face.

 _Rose?_ He sounded just slightly more like himself, and Rose was glad of that, even if she hadn't succeeded in fully reassuring him yet. _There aren't any doors._

 _I trust you, my Doctor,_ Rose said simply.

She felt his tremour in her mind rather than in his fingers, and he deepened their connection. Rose forced down the thrill she felt at being connected so deeply with the Doctor. Instead, she replayed another memory, this time of the conversation she'd had with the TARDIS, making sure to skip ahead to the part when Bad Wolf was made dormant again.

She got no warning. Every last ounce of tension left the Doctor in a rush of overwhelming relief that forced them both out of the connection. Before she could catch up with what was happening he'd hauled her bodily against him.

They were both naked, but Rose couldn't have cared less about that as she focussed on comforting her Doctor. She ran her hands through his wet mop of hair, following the rivulets of water down his neck and over his shoulders as he trembled against her. She could tell almost no time had passed since they'd started their telepathic exchange, but the heat was still starting to get to her.

"I'm so sorry, Doctor," she said softly. "I should have thought of this before, when we were alone in the console room, but telepathy doesn't come naturally to me, I guess." She kissed his forehead, and he buried his face into the crook of her neck. "We'll just have to work on that, yeah?"

The Doctor huffed a laugh, moving to press his ear to her chest, presumably to listen to her heart, and Rose held him to her. Despite their current state of undress, Rose found that sex was the furthest thing from her mind in the face of the Doctor's distress.

After a time, she chafed the Doctor's shoulders gently.

"C'mon, Doctor, let's get out of the shower and into bed, yeah?" The TARDIS had obligingly turned the water temperature down but Rose knew she must look like a prune by now. "More comfortable there. Come with me?"

He nodded, but then, adorably, averted his eyes as if there was anything he could avoid seeing. She chuckled and rose to her feet, finding it surprisingly easy not to feign modesty after everything they'd been through. The Doctor squeaked, and she looked down just in time to see his face, fire truck red, whipping to the side.

"Oh come now, Doctor," she said airily as she stepped out of the tub, "it's not like there's anything there you haven't seen before." She found the TARDIS had provided her a robe, which she gratefully wrapped herself in. "Remember our trip to Vega Prime?"

They'd gotten arrested, which was very much business as usual, and then stripped for interrogation, which decidedly wasn't. It was intended to put them in a place of vulnerability, but Rose suspected it had worked better on the Doctor than on her, which was why she rarely brought it up. From time to time they'd had adventures that resulted in varying stages of nakedness but on that particular occasion they'd both gotten an eyeful.

Or she thought they had.

"I didn't look," the Doctor mumbled, still facing away from her.

"Oh." Rose didn't know what else to say. She certainly had - it had been nearly unavoidable - and she wondered how the Doctor had managed it. She felt a brief flash of anger that he should make her feel like such a voyeur retroactively, especially considering how those glimpses had fuelled many a fantasy. "Well, I'm not looking now."

No need to make him feel worse than he already did - she was, in fact, capable of some self control, and now was hardly the time.

She held out a towel, and the Doctor stepped into it, Rose taking the opportunity to wrap her arms around him as she wrapped him in it. Their embrace still felt strange with only two layers between them, but not wrong. Never wrong. He returned it woodenly, and Rose's heart broke at the thought that there was still more troubling him. She squeezed, ignoring his lack of enthusiasm.

"I'm just gonna put something on, I'll wait for you, okay?" She moved toward the door. "Don't be long." She looked back once and found him staring after her as she left.

Rose dried herself again, pulled on a sleep vest and shorts and got into bed, sighing in relief as she relaxed back against the pillows. They were just as soft as she remembered, and it had been a very long day. She scissored her legs together for a bit, savouring the sensation of the comforter and also the tingly feeling between her legs - just because nothing was going to happen didn't mean it wasn't going to affect her, after all. It was a feeling she was very familiar with, made all the more potent by the thought that something was going to change soon. Not now. Someday.

The Doctor entered a moment later, wearing a Henley and pinstriped pyjama bottoms. He looked at her lying in the bed, and she expected his gaze to skitter away, but he didn't break eye contact until he laid down next to her, flat on his back staring at the ceiling. Rose didn't know how to bring up the subject - he was fully dressed and yet somehow seemed more exposed than he'd been in the shower.

"Doctor-" she began.

The Doctor breathed deeply, closing his eyes, and Rose knew he was processing everything that had happened.

"You're safe," he said at last, without opening his eyes. "You're here, and you're safe. No side effects from the dimension cannon, you're not going to burn from Bad Wolf."

Contrary to his words, he didn't sound glad… almost resigned. Rose bit her lip as she considered her response.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," she said, though gently. "That's what the TARDIS has been trying to tell you." When he didn't respond, she propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at him. "Doctor? Why did you block yourself off from the TARDIS?" she asked carefully.

For a minute, it seemed like he wasn't going to answer. Rose waited, before tentatively placing her hand on the Doctor's chest, in between his hearts. His breath hitched, and it was like a switch had been flipped; he grasped her hand tightly in his own and rolled onto his side, holding it in between them.

"Oh, _Rose_ ," he breathed, and Rose quickly flopped back down, welcoming the increased contact between them.

"I was scared, today," the Doctor admitted. His face twisted. "Scratch that - I was bloody _terrified_." The frank honesty in his voice shook Rose. He met her eyes, and that seemed to give him the strength he needed to continue. "I don't know what I would have done, if I'd lost you today," he said quietly. "I really don't." A mad light overtook his face suddenly and Rose fought the impulse to move away.

"Do you think they'd have stopped, Rose?" His voice was a little frightening, bearing echoes of a pain she couldn't begin to comprehend. He was, effectively, immortal. Would they ever have stopped? "The visions. If you'd-" He shut his mouth audibly to keep the words from coming out and Rose freed her hands to cup his face.

"Now, you stop that," she said fiercely. "Stop doing this to yourself, Doctor. You didn't lose anyone today. I'm here and alive and well and I'm staying with you. I am never leaving you."

Rose pulled the Doctor to her to keep him from seeing the cynical thought cross her face. Even when she hadn't been physically present, she hadn't truly left him, had she?

It was a uniquely poignant brand of guilt she bore - of course, she'd had no actual hand in the hallucinations but it was clear her image had tormented the Doctor almost to the point of madness. Was it any wonder he was having trouble coping?

"And that's just the thing, isn't it?" the Doctor burst out, pulling away from her slightly. Given that he'd been actively seeking maximal contact since they'd been reunited the movement surprised her enough that she let him go, sitting up a little straighter to mirror his posture. "You have to stay here, you can't go home! The walls of the universes are closed, you'll never be able to see your family again!"

Rose waited until the Doctor seemed to be finished, then placed a gentle kiss on his lips to prevent him from working himself up again. "Doctor, listen to me very carefully. I'm going to keep saying this as many times as necessary, but I really wish I didn't have to." She kept her voice gentle, mindful of the Doctor's fragile emotional state. She was willing to repeat her promise of forever as long as it took but she was running out of words to use.

"I am home, right now," she asserted, holding his eyes with hers. "Here, with you, on the TARDIS - this is home. Never the other universe. Yes, my family is there, and yes, I will miss them terribly, but I've been preparing for this day for three years. We all have. They understand. I thought, when you didn't put up a fight in the console room, that you understood, too - that's why I thanked you. I made my choice. It's a choice I'd rather I didn't have to make, of course, but my decision is never going to change. I choose _you_ , Doctor. And I always will."

The Doctor stared at her, and the look of incredulous hope in his dark eyes was one that she was becoming familiar with, though it still hit her like a gut punch. She wondered how much longer it would take for her words to really get through to him.

It seemed the third time would be the charm, however, as the Doctor pressed his lips to hers as though it was the only thing keeping him alive. Rose melted beneath the bruising kiss - it had been far too long since the console room - but there was still an element of desperation to it that she didn't like. He was far gone enough that she had to struggle a little bit to get enough space to breathe, and Rose frowned, about to reiterate her question about the TARDIS, when the Doctor spoke instead.

"I love you," he said, and the words shot through Rose like it was the first time. That had been about things left unfinished, but this… this was a claim. A beginning. This was the Doctor's 'never ever.'

Rose lost her breath. He usually only looked at her like this when she was Bad Wolf - seeing it when she was fully herself felt different, and she couldn't decide how she felt about it.

"I love you, too." The words came out in a rush.

His eyes grew impossibly darker, molten pools that she swore she could feel warming her skin like the heat of the sun. How could such a simple exchange affect her so deeply? She must have said the words hundreds of times before. Yet they were heavy on her tongue as though they were the only words she'd ever spoken, they touched her ears like they were the first words she'd ever heard.

The Doctor lowered his forehead to hers. "I spent so long today thinking I knew what the universe would do… what it always does. I've never known it to be kind."

Rose made a low sound and linked her hands around the back of his neck, holding him against her.

"Getting you back, keeping you safe, saving the day… I was always waiting for the switch, after all that bait." His hands caressed her sides, snaking around her hips, and she shivered against him. "It seemed inevitable. And when I was finally alone…" He tilted his head slightly, looking at some indeterminate point on the ceiling. "Expectation became reality."

Rose squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip, too easily able to fill in the blanks. "So that's why you blocked the TARDIS," she breathed.

It was easier than voicing what had really happened. He'd thought he was still back on the planet, Midnight, with the entity. That he'd been imagining his escape, their reunion, all the rest of it. She wished there was a way to hold him closer.

"No telling what the entity would have done with a sentient space and time ship," the Doctor confirmed, mirroring her position.

Rose shook her head helplessly and kissed him again. She had her own fears and doubts about coming back, but mostly just ecstatic satisfaction at having completed her goal after so long. Her first Doctor had been wounded, yes, fresh from the War and raw like an exposed nerve, but never like this, a man for whom joy was a lie.

The Doctor kissed her back, the corner of his mouth turning up ruefully against her lips.

"And that's the second time I've completely ruined our reunion, isn't it?" The self-depreciation wasn't like him at all, but this, at least, Rose had some idea of how to fix.

"Oh, I dunno." At his incredulous look, she quirked her lips, noting with pleasure how he instinctively followed the motion . "We're here together in bed, we saved the universe again like we always do - though with less running than I was expecting - and we've been snogging ever since I came back which is very much a welcome development." Her smile grew, but though his expression eased, he didn't return it. Rose sighed, taking the Doctor's hands.

"Doctor, I love you," she repeated. "I spent three years in the parallel world missing you every day. Sometimes the only thing that would get me through wasn't the wild fantasies of what I wanted to happen, it was the memory of what I wanted to get back to. Just us, like this. Holding hands."

She squeezed for emphasis and he squeezed back, his eyes never leaving hers, wide and fervent, and she knew he felt the same.

"So making it back like this? Being _with_ you? Being able to love you and hold you and comfort you?" She kissed his cheek and felt a jolt of warmth spark from the contact. "It's everything I could have wished for. Of course, I'm not happy that you're hurting, but it's you. The real you. And that makes it perfect."

The Doctor let out a long, shuddering breath, closing his eyes and blindly pressing his lips to hers in a much gentler kiss, filled with so much adoration and gratitude that it left her even more breathless than their desperate snog earlier. Rose sighed into his lips, and they parted at the suggestion. She sank her hands into his hair at the same time as her tongue swept into his mouth and they both let out identical moans of relief.

The Doctor's mouth was cool against hers, and he tasted like absolutely nothing Rose had ever experienced, except that it was intoxicating and she couldn't get enough. What she'd said before was true - they'd been kissing almost from the moment she'd gotten back, but most of those kisses had been tinged with desperation and danger. It was glorious and she wondered how they would ever be able to stop.

"I feel the same way," the Doctor whispered when Rose surfaced reluctantly for air. "This is perfect. You are perfect." He rested his head in what Rose was quickly learning was his favourite place - in the crook between her neck and shoulder where, presumably, he could hear her strong, steady pulse. She nuzzled his hair, breathing in his scent. It seemed she'd succeeded in pulling him back from the edge, at least for the moment.

There were many more things they needed to talk about, simmering beneath the surface: Jack, for one, and how he'd kept that story from her, as well as his careless attitude towards his regenerations, not to mention the events of their separate ordeals and how they'd been affected by them, up to and including when they'd been parted in the course of the day. But all that would take time. Time that they now had, Rose thought fiercely, squeezing him tighter; whether she had anything to say about it or not, the universe was going to find her intractable on this point.

She coaxed him to lie back with his head in her lap, and set about trying to massage the stress lines from his face. She ran her thumbs over his eyebrows and down his sideburns. It suddenly struck her that she was finally here, in the same universe as her Doctor, able to touch him how she liked, the way she'd fantasised about for so long. Her fingers trembled a little, and she disguised the motion by sinking them into his hair again. The Doctor gave a little hum.

"This okay?" she asked in a low voice. Their intimacy was so new she felt the need to check. He was still lying stiffly against her, and she hated the thought that he'd been struggling alone all this time, but she was also exhausted, and hoped that she'd be able to overcome his stubbornness soon enough to allow them to sleep.

"Yeah," the Doctor breathed, as she started lightly scratching his scalp. She cast about for a topic that would move them past this horrible day.

"So, I do want to find out if any of the planets I landed on don't exist in this dimension," she said at last. It was a calculated gamble, but she really was curious and it was a safe enough topic. The Doctor sucked in a breath, but he didn't protest. "Of course, I don't know the names of any of them," she continued, "but I thought I could describe them to you and you could tell me if they sound familiar."

The Doctor made another low sound, this time of agreement, and so Rose sought for some safe planets to mention: no need to bring up any of her more painful memories just yet.

"Hmm… Okay. Well, one that really stands out is this planet with crystal geysers," she said, excitement pulsing in her voice. She hadn't really wanted to leave that planet, it had been so beautiful. "Now I'm not just talking about geysers coming out of crystal or anything like that, I mean actual crystals shooting out of the ground like water. There must've been some sort of crystal particles in the soil because all the trees were shimmering too, like they'd absorbed some along with their nutrients."

"Ooh, very good, Rose," the Doctor said proudly, and Rose noted with satisfaction that the bleak edge had blunted in his voice. "That's exactly what happens on Kira IV; the entire ecosystem is built on those mineral deposits and the way they react with the chemical composition of the second sun."

"You mean there was a planet like that here all along and we've never visited?" Rose exclaimed in mock outrage, and the corner of the Doctor's mouth turned up.

"The universe is a big place, Rose," he said lightly. "I'll put it at the top of the list."

Rose tried again. "What about an entire forest of giant mushrooms?"

"Sounds like Quozaar," the Doctor replied at once. "We'll have to go there so you can check, but you need to bring rebreathers: the stench is something truly awful."

"Really?" Rose asked, surprised. "The one I went to had this musty potpourri smell. Took me ages to get it out of anything but it wasn't that unpleasant."

She'd piqued the Doctor's interest, which had been her intention, and everything else faded away as they traded descriptions and names back and forth, rapid-style. Though she would have given it all up just to be with him again, Rose had to admit it was kind of cool, having seen bits of the universe without the Doctor and being able to talk from her own experience rather than just being led around by him everywhere.

Rose was thrilled when, after a few minutes of steady going, her initial description did not meet with an automatic answer from the Doctor. She'd stopped actually massaging him and was letting her fingers drift aimlessly over his features, which were more at rest than she'd ever seen them, maybe since before the Olympics, or even earlier. He twisted his lips as he considered, and she watched the gears whirring in his big Time Lord brain.

"I can honestly say that doesn't ring any bells, Rose," he said at last, and she couldn't contain her squeak of delight. "It was all underground, you say?"

"Yup! Just like Moria or something, it was amazing! All these geometric columns," Rose enthused. She couldn't believe her luck. Not only had she managed to find a planet of which the Doctor was unaware, but she'd had an adventure there that had actually ended happily. "My hopper normally landed me on the surface of planets so I was a little confused at first, but get this, Doctor: there were elves living there! Actual tiny elves with pointy ears! 'Course I was expecting dwarves, but they were perfectly friendly to strangers…"

She told the story, keeping her eyes on the Doctor the whole time, whose eyes were closed, listening to her voice. She'd dreamed for so long about being able to tell him in person like this, the moment took on a dreamlike quality as she wove her tale.

"...And of course all the rest of them were standing about yelling 'demon!' Or at least I thought they were, no handy translation circuit after all. But Orta just stepped up and put her hand on the giant rock monster and it could speak through her. I guess it told them what Orta and I'd known all along, that it wasn't causing the earthquakes, it was trying to stop them, because everyone calmed down and started trying to help. I hopped back once I was sure they'd stopped."

Her voice trailed away as the story ended and she looked down at the Doctor, who was breathing peacefully, expression relaxed. To an outside observer it would look like he'd fallen asleep but Rose knew better. She shimmied down until she was lying next to the Doctor, and he wrapped his arms around her as the TARDIS dimmed the lights.

"I am so proud of you, Rose," he said fervently next to her ear, and Rose had to blink back tears. When she'd told him about jumping his first reaction had been blind panic, and she hadn't realised how much that had affected her. She snuggled into his chest and his grip tightened around her, and she was home. In the course of telling the story her mind had gone back to the time when she was without the Doctor, and she took comfort in the firm solidity of his body next to hers.

Rose was exhausted, already hovering on the edge of sleep, but there was one more thing she wanted to say, remembering the Doctor's words that had started all this. "Doctor, I could have had a good life in the parallel world, maybe even a great one." She worked one arm around his waist, pulling him closer still. "But there's no such thing as a fantastic life without you."

She opened her eyes to find the Doctor's face, an inch from hers, staring at her like she was made of stars and wonder. He opened his mouth, but when nothing came out, he gave up and kissed her, his agreement ringing out with every movement of his lips against hers.

 **~oOo~**

Rose knew that she must have fallen asleep at some point, because she awoke with the Doctor still curled into her side, but she didn't remember when they'd stopped kissing. It set the tone for next week or so (she lost track) that they spent floating in the Vortex, learning to be themselves again. They did catch up on _By the Light of the Asteroid_ , despite being thoroughly distracted by intense snogging sessions which meant they had to go back and watch through it all over again to actually follow the story.

The Doctor never brought up the med bay, even though Rose had been expecting him to since breakfast on the first day. She was surprised, but didn't bring it up herself, knowing he couldn't have forgotten, instead appreciating the respite. She guessed he'd gotten enough reassurance from her and the TARDIS that first night and was trying to do something nice for her.

They also explored telepathy, in fits and starts, 'dipping their toes' as the Doctor put it. Through their brief connections, Rose understood that the Doctor didn't feel that his mind was a good place for her to be right then, and she accepted this, not being entirely comfortable with everything in her mind yet either until she'd had a chance to work through it herself.

Mostly, though, they rested; read together in the library, or stargazed out the doors of the TARDIS, or took picnic lunches to one of the TARDIS' garden rooms. Anything that would allow them to stay as close as physically possible.

They spent a lot of time in bed together, though they had yet to actually take the step into further physical intimacy. Rose found she didn't mind. Though her frustration in the weeks leading up to their separation had been thick enough to cut with a knife, she'd changed now, and so had the Doctor. They still hadn't addressed most of what lurked beneath the surface of their quiet time together. Neither of them were ready. The difference was, this Rose knew it was only a matter of time, and let herself enjoy the kissing and increased intimacy, even though it never escalated.

Rose stayed in bed because she'd rarely allowed herself to do so in Pete's World, and because cuddling the Doctor in his bed was quickly becoming her favourite activity. The Doctor stayed because she was there, but Rose thought he could use the break as well. They'd both pushed themselves to the limit during their three years apart and they took the necessary time to pull themselves back from that brink.

The Doctor wasn't sure when he stopped watching Rose like a miracle who could disappear at any moment, but the change came gradually, helped along by Rose's endless patience with him. He did want to run tests, but now that he had a moment to think, thanks to Rose and the TARDIS' telepathic reassurance, he realised that being in the med bay brought up uncomfortable memories for Rose because of her time at Torchwood. This was supposed to be a healing time for both of them, so he refrained.

She also never showed any signs of restlessness in regards to their extended stay in the Vortex; though she never said so aloud, she'd missed the TARDIS, and vice versa. He likewise felt no prick of wanderlust, for once, and grasped the opportunity with both hands. He finally allowed himself to admit how difficult the past three years had been, what with losing Rose, the Master, and the entity, and was glad to be able to follow Rose's advice, to allow his psyche to rest instead of burying it in more sensory input. Of course, the fact that he was able to do so at all without feeling like clawing at the walls was due to Rose's presence. That wasn't to say that those problems went away - they both still had their own demons to fight. They were just getting themselves in better shape to do so.

As the Doctor watched Rose over breakfast one morning, just over a week in linear time since she'd returned to his universe, he knew that this time, blessed and essential as it had been, was drawing to a close, and that a new chapter in their lives was about to begin. She'd been shooting him covert glances for the last day or two, and though she was still perfectly content, he could sense the wind changing.

He knew it would still be a while before he would be able to fully accept that the universe had relented and allowed him to keep her, and though it was tempting to hide away in the hopes that they wouldn't be noticed, he would not squander this (second? Third? How many chances now had he been given with Rose Tyler?) time he'd been granted.

He'd told himself when she was lost that he would not waste a single moment, if he ever got another with her. Not that this had been wasted time, but there was a growing impetus behind Rose's kisses and something would have to give - soon. More than that: he wanted it to. The thought both surprised him and felt like it had been a part of him since he'd been born into this body, this body made for the woman who was currently watching him from across the breakfast table.

"So what do you think about making planetfall today?" he asked brightly, and when he was rewarded with eager excitement sparking in her glorious eyes he knew he'd made the right decision.

"Do you have somewhere in mind?" Rose replied easily, and it was almost like nothing had changed. "Are we going to Kira IV?" she asked, and the Doctor shook his head, hoping his wince hadn't been obvious. He hadn't really registered it when she'd brought it up before but it bore far too much resemblance to a certain diamond planet for his liking. They'd make it there eventually, just not yet.

"Not yet," he said. "It's on the list, but an uninhabited crystal planet does not provide accommodations for the kind of activities in which I wish to partake with you."

He barely managed to add the last two words, his hearts racing in his chest like he'd just run back to back marathons, amazed in some part of him that he'd actually managed to say anything at all.

Rose didn't notice at first. "Oh, and what sorts of activities might those be?" Because he was watching her, he saw the exact moment when she decided to make it a sincere, rather than a teasing comment. Her voice trailed away when she saw the way he was looking at her. "Wait. You don't mean…"

He kept his eyes trained on her, fighting the impulse to look away, to deflect. She was gripping her utensils like she was afraid they'd try to run away. He was gripped by sudden anxiety. Was it too soon? Was she not ready? Had he completely misread everything?

"...If that's all right with you?" He made himself make it a question, telling himself he was lucky to have her back at all, that she wasn't going to leave him over this.

Her eyes were round as saucers as she searched his face for a long moment. This had been so long coming, he couldn't blame her for being cautious. "Oh, _Doctor_ …"

The hope and joy in her voice galvanised him, and he reached across the table to touch her cheek, giving her time to pull away if his touch was unwelcome. She didn't.

"Go pack a bag for a tropical resort," he said gently, as she leaned into his caress, eyes never leaving his, though they sparked with lust and anticipation. "I'll meet you in the console room."

She leaped from her chair as though she was afraid he was going to change his mind (he cringed inwardly at how likely that would have been, for an earlier version of him) and seemed to struggle with herself for a moment before edging around the table to slip into his lap, capturing his lips in a passionate promise of things to come. He groaned against her mouth, his control over his bodily reactions tenuous now that he was anticipating losing them entirely, and her kiss heated in response.

He pulled back slightly with a soft pop, examining Rose's heavy-lidded eyes which concealed an ecstatic expression.

"Go on," he told her, startled to hear his voice an octave deeper than usual. "Pack. Or else we'll never get there."

She wriggled cheekily against him as she extricated herself from his lap, making his eyes roll in his head and pulling another low sound from him, before practically fleeing the room. The Doctor sat quietly for a moment, attempting to regulate his breathing, before making his way to the console room, in order to double- and triple-check the coordinates to make sure they arrived at the right time and place.

 _Give me a hand, old girl?_ He sent the silent plea to the TARDIS, and received a wave of almost giddy affirmation in response. It seemed she was in favour of his plans, and that was to the good, even if he wasn't sure how he felt about his sentient time ship knowing of them in the first place.

The mental equivalent of an impatient huff was sent his way, and he raised an eyebrow. _Oh, and don't think you're getting out of a discussion of what the hell that was the other day. Your little stunt scared me half to death!_

A slightly apologetic whistle was his response, and he bit back a chuckle, something he wouldn't have been capable of, even a week before. But then, a week ago, he hadn't been travelling with Rose, preparing to bring her to the planet where he'd always intended to make love to her, in the nebulous future of his fantasies that he was forever dismissing but was somehow now a reality. He almost didn't know who he was any more without the constant, gnawing grief. He couldn't wait to find out.

Rose arrived a minute later, wearing a sundress and an ardent expression, both of which were equally flattering. She set down a suitcase and sauntered towards him, until he was backed up against the console. He felt a little bit like prey, and was surprised to find it wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation.

"So, where are we off to, Doctor?" she asked, drawing her fingers down his chest. He gulped, calling upon centuries of Time Lord restraint to keep from pinning her against the console, sod his plans. From the intent look in her eye, Rose knew it, too, pressing forward, though she was careful not to cut off his escape entirely. He shook his head inwardly - how could it be that this incredible woman wanted _him_?

"Oh, just a little place I've been wanting to take you for quite a while now." He said the words flippantly, which was a mistake. Rose pounced.

"Well in that case, I have a few suggestions," she purred. The Doctor only belatedly realised the double entendre in his words.

Oh, he was going to be _very_ bad at this, wasn't he?

He could see the conflict playing out in Rose's expression: she was happy this was happening, enough to make her this bold, but she was also afraid of crossing some invisible line - a state of affairs for which the Doctor knew he once again had himself to blame. He allowed himself to relax, just a fraction, and Rose moved in closer, scenting victory. She pressed a kiss to the triangle of bared skin at his throat before slowly, torturously, skimming her nose along his jawline. The Doctor couldn't suppress a tiny shiver.

"As - hm - tempting as I'm sure those suggestions are, perhaps we could wait until we've arrived at our destination to - ah - play them out?" His carefully laid plans were becoming more distant and nebulous as she purposefully undid the buttons of his suit jacket.

"You're wearing too much," was her only reply, which made him splutter incredulously.

When he'd gotten dressed he'd simply thrown his pinstriped jacket over one of the red tees he'd worn with his blue suit (a mourning suit which he would never wear again, not for a very long while). It was the fewest layers he'd worn since the Olympics, and Rose had to know that.

"For a tropical resort? You must get so hot in that suit," she was saying, and he was, though not from the temperature. Never from the temperature. It took him a moment to be able to regulate his body heat like the Time Lord he was and not some randy adolescent human ready to pop off at the slightest touch of a woman, like he'd seen in all those awful films.

Gauging his reaction carefully, she moved her hands to his shoulders and slowly slid the jacket off them. He allowed it to happen, shrugging it off when it got caught on his elbows and tossing it to the jumpseat. Rose ran her hands down his bared arms and he shivered harder this time. Her hands were so warm. She hummed in approval.

"Much better."

Wanting to regain a modicum of control, he smoothed Rose's dress down her sides, where he knew she was sensitive. She jumped slightly, her eyes huge and darker than he'd ever seen them. He fought to conceal a smirk; as sensitive as he was to being touched, his naturally cool skin certainly granted him at least one advantage in this regard.

Slyly, he copied her sensuous caress, his hearts beating faster through his nervousness. He wasn't ever this forward, and he thought he'd better get some practice in considering what he had planned for the day. It certainly seemed just as effective on Rose, and he felt a glimmer of satisfaction as he prepared to make his point.

"Thank you so much for taking care of it," he murmured. "Now, where were we?"

Rose made a low sound, seeking his lips, and he sprung his trap.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, spinning away and leaving her dazed in his wake. He placed his hand on the dematerialisation lever, giving her a cheeky wink. "I think I remember."

She smiled fondly and took his hand, glancing up at him through her lashes, his third heart that made him whole. The Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS, as it should be. He threw the lever.

"Barcelona!"

* * *

And that's all, she wrote!

A very, very special thanks also to Chocolatequeen for being my first beta, my incredible support as I took my baby steps into the world of the fandom, and just generally the best friend anyone could ask for.

Eternal and undying gratitude to hellostarlight20, without whom none of this would be possible. You are my cheerleader, and your help has been absolutely invaluable. You made this story what it is, and I don't have words to express how grateful I am. You are amazing. Thank you so much!


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